AWOL: Absent WithOut Leave
by ArtisticAbandon
Summary: [rating overall] Nightwing disappears after 'killing' the Joker to sort things out. Now, 6 months later, a new villain appears, claiming the unthinkable... What price are the heroes willing to pay for victory? for truth?
1. MIA: A Case Left Open

_Disclaimer:_ I claim no part of any of the characters of DC Comics and their creators as I'm using them for my own entertainment and that of anyone who reviews. Joey Flaherty is the property of John Westcott, who is kindly letting me use him. The lyrical extract from Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again (from The Phantom of the Opera) is reproduced from those supplied courtesy of Williamson Music, ASCAP. The extract from the intro to Disney's Aladdin has never been mine and ain't ever gonna be mine. Don't sue me!  
Furthermore, I am **not** being paid (worse luck), and I promise to return the characters in one piece (more or less). I'm just a penniless student scraping the bottom of the barrel on welfare and trying to get a passing grade. Besides, the only thing I have of value is my computer, classical cds, and a few bits of jewellery. Be Gentle. :-)

_Timeline:_ Deals with the fallout from 'The Last Laugh' arc. Consider the universe halted in its tracks from that point on...and the DC cannon picks up right where it left from whatever point I finish this at.

_Universe:_ DCU mainly, but I've borrowed bits from John Westcott's fantastic Nightwing series.

_Summary:_ Unable to cope with the fact that he 'killed' the Joker, Nightwing immediately went underground. Six months later, a new villain appears...and a humble PI claims the unthinkable.

_Rating:_ At the high end of PG13. Not quite enough for an R rating, although I tend to think its close, particularly about the third chapter. Just tell me if you think I should change the rating (either higher or lower) in any way. Rated mainly for a few scribbled out swear-words and implicated dismembering (opening few scenes only in this chapter). Nothing graphic, but you've been warned if that ain't your thing.

_Category:_ Angst tending towards action, with a dash of mystery to spice things up.

_Author's Notes:_ All you really gotta know is that I'm going to treat the "Last Laugh" events as if they happened shortly after Westcott's "A Matter of Vengeance". Still, I hope some of you like this story. If you do, could you, um, review? This is my first attempt in this fandom/area, and well, encouragement helps, ya know? Critical reviews will also be accepted, as long you don't rip my story to shreds! :)

BTW, _'italics'_ will indicate thoughts. Generally, I'll be using underline for emphasis and **bold** for added emphasis.

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This story (for better or worse) is dedicated to:  
_John Westcott_, for writing such great stories and letting me pick his brain about the DCU;  
_Jim Greeno_ and _Micro Hue_ for having the courage to look at my initial drafts and not scream, faint, curse me, or do anything but encourage me to continue;  
The _betas_ who, sometimes coming into this half-way through, managed always to pick up where I'd left off and somehow managed to figure out and improve what I was trying to do;  
The _Grayfox_, who wrote such a wonderful review on my first ever fic (in a different fandom) that it has inspired me to keep writing throughout some of the darker periods;  
Last but not least, everyone who has ever taken the time to read and/or write a story/review, thus feeding my muse. 

Without your help, either directly or indirectly, this fic would've never even been attempted.

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**ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE  
Missing In Action**

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_**Chapter 1  
A Case Left Open**_

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_Try to forgive; teach me to live  
Give me the strength to try  
No more memories; no more silent tears  
No more gazing across the wasted years  
_Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again  
Andrew Lloyd-Webber

_On a dark night . . . a dark man waits . . . with a dark purpose . . ._  
Disney's Aladdin

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Night. The darkest part of the day. A time of darkness, for shadowy dealings and the cowardly of heart.

Tonight, however, all that was going to change.

Tonight, although many would not know it and would continue to sleep these hours away, there was a new criminal of the night. Tonight, there was something here greater than even this Blockbuster to terrorize the lowlifes inhabiting this city, something far more unpredictable and shrewder than the so-called 'Nightwing' that had been hanging around the city's skies until his run-in with Gotham's Joker almost half a year ago. Ever since, Nightwing had not been spotted in Blüdhaven – rumour had it that he had been either killed in the confrontation (always followed with a hearty "And good riddance!" by the relevant storyteller), or was too demoralized by his 'murder' to fight. Either way, he was gone. It was only the old Titans and sometimes Robin that watched over Blüdhaven now.

However, there was now one man other than Roland Desmond who was not afraid of these so-called "vigilantes," one man who refused to be afraid...of anything.

This man.

The shadows shifted slowly as he stepped onto the doorway, caressing his body like a lover's soft hands. The darkness in the alley shifted and swirled around him as he emerged from the building, apparently gathering around him, merging with the blackness of his heart. To this, though, he paid no mind, accepting it as quickly as he had embraced his newfound powers.

He breathed in deeply as he moved. It was as if this was his first taste of fresh air in decades, even though Blüdhaven's air was anything but fresh. The overpowering aroma clogging the night was sewerage and the stink of excrement left out in the sun all day. As seemed to happen on an almost hourly basis, some unscrupulous men had dumped of couple of truckloads of waste into the already heavily polluted waters of the bay. The BPA (Blüdhaven Port Authority) no longer bothered with trying to stop such things. What was the point? Almost everyone in the BPA was paid (and paid well) to look the other way at such things going on. Besides, rumour had it that there was a waiting list for similar dumpings of waste (often toxic) about a week or more long. Stopping one group would only open up the way for about ten more.

Underneath such a hearty aroma was the rancid stink of sweat, greed and unbounded despair. In a city besieged by corruption despite the best efforts of its vigilante watchers, it was not very surprising. Although slavery had been abolished at least a century ago in the 'civilized' Western World, the desperate could sell themselves (and their souls) each night for the price of a single drink at one of the 'Haven's many bars and establishments – with no one to stop them. The cops, after all, were too busy lining their own pockets, and the few decent ones of the B.C.P.D. ...well, let's just say that the 'example' set by a certain Officer Richard Grayson had been more than enough to stop the few clean cops left from making waves.

The dark man smirked with evil satisfaction at the thought.

Yes, Officer Grayson and his "companion" known as "Nightwing" had indeed proven an interesting challenge...but still one he had ultimately conquered.

The man's evil smile widened as he stepped further into the night.

The message he had sent Batman about his "son" should have arrived by now. Bats, the JLA and the Titans ought to be arriving in force any day now.

Yes...any day now....and he would have his full **revenge** for what had been done to him.

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_What Came To Pass I_

_The dark void he had lain in for so long slowly lifted as consciousness returned to him in a small trickle._

_The first thing that came back was smell. Smell of sour, old dirt, of sweat, of freshly-primed leather. All the interesting aromas that come to you when you're lying in a cave deep underground..._ 'Wait. What am I doing underground? I don't belong in the ground...or do I...?'

_As if on cue, his memories returned to him in a flood, bombarding him with images and emotions too quickly for him to process. It took all his strength to force the overwhelming images down, shoving them back into the small box they came from. He didn't want to think about that, about what he had done..._

_His thoughts halted abruptly as the sound of big, booming laughter echoed in his ears. His heart clenched and sped up at the sound, fear hammering at his mind despite himself. He knew that laugh. Still, he strove to keep his eyes shut and his breathing even. He did not want him to suspect that he was awake – or something near the vicinity of "awake," anyway._

_As his senses slowly returned, he realized something more important: he was still "in costume." He could feel a draft from somewhere playing over his hair, but not where his mask normally lay, nor where his costume was. He breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that at least his identity was still safe . . . Then again, it didn't matter how safe his "dentity" was. He already knew exactly who he was._

_Cautiously he eased his eyes open, trusting the starlite lenses in his mask to hide his sudden awareness from him. He blinked as rapidly as he dared in an attempt to clear both the cobwebs from his brain and the darkness from his vision. No such luck. His head was still throbbing, his thoughts were still fuzzy, and his vision was still dark._

'Damn! Concussed. Why does he always have to hit me so hard anyway?'

_His hazy, half-realized thoughts were answered when heavy footsteps came toward him. It was only his instincts, the kind born from years of exactly the wrong kind of living, that warned him of danger. Whatever was coming for him was not going to be good for his state of health. Half-remembered images of torture sprang up before his eyes, and with these came pain, a deep, throbbing pain that felt more familiar than it should have. Fear began playing a cold tune along his spine and his heart danced inside his chest as he blinked hard again, hoping to get his stubborn eyes to focus._

'He's coming...for me...'

_His body tensed for action, although outwardly he remained sprawled where he had fallen...even though he could not really remember the last time he had fallen from anything._

'Run... Got to run...'

_He tried to leap to his feet, to escape the coming horrors beating on the doors at the edge of his mind._

_He couldn't move._

_He was fully conscious, but he could not move. Not even if his life depended on it . . . which it did. His breathing deepened and a fine sheen of sweat graced his brow as panic squeezed his heart like a vice._

'RUN!'

_His panic increased when the footsteps stopped beside him. Desperately he tried to leap to his feet, to kick out this strange foe, to turn his head towards it, or even to move his little finger up from the dusty ground._

_He failed. Dismally._

_The silence grew. His foe seemed to be staring at him, waiting for a response._

_He blinked hard again behind the mask, struggling to force his eyes to clear. Slowly, ever so slowly, the figure resolved itself into a blur he could vaguely recognize. All at once, his panic subsided and his jaw dropped in surprise. "Batman?" He felt surprised to hear his own voice when the rest of his body was completely paralysed, but his mind quickly accepted it as a fact – or quirk – of nature._

_There was no reply, but then he didn't really expect one anyway. Batman was said not to be one for conversation – seeing him was a sign of rescue or a sign of a period of unconsciousness soon to follow. So he slowly allowed himself to relax overly tense muscles. Everything was going to be okay. Batman was here. He was going to be rescued._

_Then, Batman spoke, in a voice that sent chills racing through his heart. "Did you really think you could get away so easily?"_

_He felt himself cringing at the...taunt...in The Voice as old wounds he'd thought healed were torn open once more by the words. Fear rose again inside his heart as he struggled to comprehend the situation, and how he could be thoughta failure when he didn't know what he'd failed on._

_Before he could organize his thoughts and emotions into any resemblance of order, however, he felt Batman grab hold of his wrist in a vice-like grip harder than steel and start dragging him away. He stared at the black cowl in confusion, his throat working as he struggled to ask what was wrong. However, this time, no sound emerged from his throat._

_He cast his eyes around desperately, trying to find some way – any way – to free himself. Nothing. He looked for someone to help him, to get the crazed Bat off him. He squinted into the shadows, thinking he had glimpsed movement in his peripheral vision._

_And then__ he saw them. All of them. All of the Bat-Clan standing in the shadows, watching dispassionately as Batman dragged him across the floor of the cavern. Not one of them made any movement to help him. He tried to call out, to beg their help. But before he could even form the words, Batman stopped and suddenly threw his limp body against the wall._

_He landed with a hard bone-crunching sound, and felt something grate within his chest at the impact. His body fell to the floor and he slumped to the side, unable even to hold his head up. Dazed, lying paralysed on the floor, nowhere near broken, he could only stare at the black cowl as Batman stood over him and said in The Voice, "You can't escape me, boy."_

_And then__ there was no time for anything else, for the pain began all over again. At least now he knew why he could still speak, but was unable to move the rest of his body._

_It was not to make sure that he wouldn't escape._

_No._

_It was so he could scream. _

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The mail package arrived at the doorstep of the Gotham City Police Department without warning, addressed simply:

**  
Batman  
C/- The Commissioner**

It arrived exactly at mid-day during the busiest part of the lunch-hour traffic, although later investigation would reveal that no one saw the person who delivered the fateful package.

Of course, such a package was naturally greeted with much caution. With Gotham's history of psycho-maniacs running loose in the city, there was no telling what such a box would contain.

A routine scan of the small cardboard box by Gotham's Bomb Squad revealed nothing untoward...outwardly, anyway. No wires, no plastique, not even one shred of metal. Nor was there any trace of Smilex, fear toxins, or any other such manufactured threats. In fact, the box seemed to contain purely organic matter.

Even so, it was still untouched by human hands. It was only after they determined that Poison Ivy was still in solitary confinement at Arkham that they approached the unassuming box with anything shorter than the proverbial barge pole. Duly cautious, they opened the package using a robot in an airproof room, just in case it contained a deadly organic substance. It was at this point, a mere five hours after its mysterious delivery, when they determined that the package did not contain something poisonous to humans as its contents were examined for the first time by human eyes.

The sight was enough for even the most battle-hardened, cynical cop in the entire Police Department (namely, Detective Bullock) to dash to the toilets with a queer, green expression on his face. Even Commissioner Aiken needed time to 'compose himself' in the nearest toilet stall after viewing the box's grizzly contents.

That night, the Bat-signal was lit well before dusk.

Despite this, the Bat was late in arriving. The Commissioner stood on the roof, pulling his jacket closer to protect him from the unseasonably cold winds from the north. Aiken alternated between pacing anxiously and smoking his pipe as he waited. He would never admit to being nervous to his subordinates, but he could not deny the butterflies flirting around his stomach. He told himself it was because of the grizzly nature of his news – this kind of thing was never easy – instead of his fear of the Bat.

He morosely looked up at the signal illuminating the night sky. He had been waiting for over two hours so far, and he had at least double that in work waiting for him on his desk. _'This is gonna be a long night.'_

With one final glance at the sky, he sighed and turned around to order the signal deactivated. Looks like the Bat was not going to come after all...

"What is it?"

The Commissioner whirled, his heart beating wildly at the gravely voice coming from the edge of the roof. He was not quite sure what he expected to see, but all he could determine was the glow of the Bat's eyes from the shadowy edge. His mouth suddenly dry, he muttered, "B-Batman?"

The figure remained silent, a confirmation in itself.

Aiken heard himself sigh again. "I-I called you here for a favour. A big one."

Again, silence. The eyes remained immobile, unrevealing if it was a silence of interest or one of apathy.

He licked his lips nervously. "I need you to find someone for me."

This, at least, generated a response, albeit in an unhappy growl. "I deliver justice, Commissioner, not messages." The eyes disappeared as the figure turned to go.

"Wait!" he blurted. "I know this is going to sound strange, what with his profile and all, but I need you to find Bruce Wayne. It's very urgent."

The figure paused (froze?) with its back still to him. A beat. "Explain."

"I've called his office repeatedly but not even Lucius Fox knows where he is exactly, only telling me that he's called in sick for the last two months or so. I called the Wayne Manor, but his butler said he's been out of the country for last few weeks dealing with a personal emergency." He took a deep breath and launched his final appeal. "Look, I know it's a lot to ask when you're looking after the entire city Batman, but we have to find him urgently."

The dark man turned to face him slowly, still appearing more apathetic than truly interested. "Why?"

"You mean 'Why is it so urgent?'" Silence, which he took as another 'yes'. "We-uh-we received a package earlier today he needs to see. It concerns his adopted ward and-"

He got no further as Batman interrupted firmly, "Give me the package. He'll have it by morning."

Relieved beyond words, Aiken snapped his fingers. Montoya immediately emerged from behind him, carrying a plastic evidence bag containing the mysterious package. Even now, they were being especially careful not to ruin any of the prints on the box – even if they all doubted there was any on it to begin with. The figure did not flinch when Montoya appeared, having been aware of her from the moment he had landed on the roof.

The box soon disappeared in the folds of a black cape. "Anything else you want me to deliver?" the man growled a hairs-breadth away from the Voice.

The Commissioner shivered despite himself. "Not really. Just make sure that..." He trailed off, realizing suddenly that there was no point in continuing the suggestion that Wayne have company when he opened that box.

Why bother when the Bat was long gone?

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It was with great relief that Robin parked his Redbird in its designated spot in the Batcave a few minutes later. It was not the first time he had pretended to be the Bat for the Commissioner, but Aiken could be a bit more alert and prone to taking action about such things than Jim Gordon had been. He was lucky his voice was starting to get deeper. Still, he couldn't help but have a bad feeling about the package lying on the Redbird's passenger seat.

Alfred looked up from dusting the Cray's, one carefully raised eyebrow the only sign that he was startled to see the young vigilante back so soon. "Ah, Master Robin. I trust your meeting with the Commissioner went well?"

"Yeah," Robin nodded absently, his mind more on the strange box than the butler's words. Taking the package from the seat next to him, he carefully carried it over to the Bat-Computer. Setting it down on an analysis table, he immediately began to open it.

He was not as worried as the G.C.P.D. had been about the risk of the package containing dangerous or toxic substances, as the Commissioner would've surely told him if it did. Still, just to be safe, he'd directed the formidable computer onboard his Redbird at the box en route and had found nothing outwardly untoward.

Besides, the Commissioner had specifically told him it had something to do with Dick. He would not admit it to anyone, but this Robin missed his surrogate brother dearly. It had been six months since Dick went underground to sort himself out after that disastrous affair with the Joker. Personally, Tim had expected Dick to come back after at least a few days, two weeks at the most. And with every day that he delayed, Bruce became more and more withdrawn. Robin and Tim did what they could to keep Bruce otherwise occupied and tried to ensure Batman didn't take out his frustrations too much on Gotham's criminal element, but he'd long since learned that there was a limit to what he could do. If Bruce wanted to be reclusive and upset at the world in general, there was nothing this Robin could really do about it.

Bruce needed Dick back to snap him out of this dark mood he'd fallen into. It was that simple.

That was why Dick's long absence was concerning him. No one else would admit to it, but Tim was beginning to be convinced that the long delay in his return could only be due to foul play. Dick was a smart man, smarter than he and probably even than his surrogate father. Dick knew how much Bruce depended on him, let alone Babs. Tim knew with all his heart that Dick would not commit suicide over the Joker's 'death'...but he hated to think what else could be keeping Dick away. Therefore, he was going to open the box as soon as possible. This package, Tim knew, could be the key to Dick's whereabouts. Why else had the Commissioner been so firm that Bruce be given it immediately? Sure, Bruce would be well within his rights to blast him about it...but Tim was sure it was worth the risk if he got a bit of an head-start on finding Dick.

Nevertheless, it was the smell of decaying flesh that first alerted Robin that he should not have been so eager to open the box. By then, however, it was already far too late for him, as he'd opened it with his head directly above the box. The small glimpse he had of the contents as he opened the flaps was more than enough to send his entire world spinning.

He staggered back, his stomach feeling as if it had the front-row seat on an out-of-control Titan's Jet with the Joker at the helm. With that last thought, he crashed to his knees as his rebellious stomach relieved itself of its contents.

Alarmed by the boy's response, Alfred stopped dusting long enough to investigate what had so upset the young Master. His own quick look at the contents of the package invoked a similar reaction to Tim's, although it was only his strong sense of decorum and dignity that stopped his last meal from ending up on the floor – although it did nothing to stop the half-digested food from leaving his stomach in the first place.

The small, unassuming cardboard box held only one item: a human hand, severed from the rest of the body below the wrist. Fairly recently too.

But this was not what upset them, although it would've been more than enough to make any normal (sane) person have nightmares for weeks. As vigilantes, and their hired help, they had seen worse things in their years of haunting Gotham's skies.

Carved into the palm of the hand was the gold insignia of the Bat, below which was a smaller replication of Nightwing's midnight-blue 'V'. To make matters worse, the sadistic man who'd done this had even taken the time to dye the incisions with the right colours.

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Barbara Gordon stared numbly at her screen, never really noticing that the screen was blank. She had turned almost everything off four hours ago when she'd crashed after two days of solid coding. She would never remember how she got herself into the 'Oracle room', fully dressed and in her wheelchair at two in the morning, and all without turning on any lights. Nevertheless, here she was...staring sadly at her empty screen.

_'...Empty...'_

The significance of the day and hour, though, could not escape her notice. She sighed and flicked her gaze to the clock above her computer.

_'Six months almost down to the day...right down to the hour...'_

In terms of calendar days and hours past, it had indeed been six months since the light in her life had disappeared; but in terms of the aging of a broken heart and an empty soul, it was a lifetime and a half. It was far too long to be alone.

Part of her said it could not possibly be half a year since she had seen or spoken with her Dick Grayson or Nightwing. It seemed like only yesterday that she was making the fateful call to direct him to where the Joker was after Robin's disappearance. It seemed as if only a few hours had passed since he had left the message on her answering machine to tell her he was 'going away for a while'. She still had the tape; it was nestled securely in the safe where she put the things she treasured most. In that safe she also had the friendship locket he had given her all those years ago, her few momentoes of her parents, one of the batarangs she'd used as Batgirl, even pictures of her with Jim and Dick before...**that** day she lost her legs and a part of her soul. Yes, that one single safe held her most treasured and bittersweet memories. It had seemed like a fitting place to put her final record of Dick's voice, even though it had been to say goodbye.

Barbara slowly sipped the cup of coffee resting between her hands, absently noting that it was prepared just the way she liked it. Although she was not sure how it got there in the first place, she knew that she needed it. The way she felt, the java would be the only thing keeping her going throughout the coming night.

The electronic noise of her comms came as a welcome intrusion into her thoughts. Wishing for something to distract her even for a few moments away from the significance of this day, she quickly booted up her system and answered the call on a secure line.

All business, she started to say, "You've reached the Oracle." She suddenly stopped about halfway through to stare at the face on the screen. It was Robin's face, pale but grimly serious, and without the mask. Her 'Oracle' persona faded a little as her concern mounted and alarm bells started to toll. "Ti—Robin? Are you okay? Did the Bat...?"

Robin shook his head slowly as he gathered himself to the point that he no longer looked quite so pale and shaken, although the grim lines to his expression remained. "Nah. He's fine, at least as far as I know. I just wanted you to take a look at the prints I'm sending you."

Oracle opened the file as soon as it arrived and directed her computers at it without really looking at the prints it contained. "Already done, but don't the Cray's have finger-print matching capabilities?"

Robin nodded, the depths of his eyes shaded haunted in the Cave's light. "It does. I want you to tell me it's wrong."

Her eyebrows rose at the strange request, but still she said nothing as she waited for her computer to come back with a match. Within seconds, a small beep only she could hear alerted her that her systems were finished with the file. She did not think anything of the fact that only one file had been listed as a match – such things happened regularly – so maybe it was just her tiredness that made her not look at the title of the data-file before she opened it.

All the saliva drained from her mouth as her heart stopped beating. _'No. It can't be...'_

Tim's face took on a grim expression as he supplied the disturbing answer to the question she dared not ask but was written over her features. "They're Dick's, aren't they?"

She nodded, not sure of her voice. She had to swallow a few times, closing her eyes and employing a few Tibetan techniques she'd picked up from her time as Batgirl to get the panic under control. "Where...Where did these prints come from, Tim?" she asked hoarsely, disbelieving eyes still fixed on the monitor displaying the shocking result.

If anything, his face looked even grimmer. "His hand," he replied bluntly (bleakly). "It was sent to the Commissioner earlier today in a cardboard box."

"His hand..." she echoed softly. Blame her own exhaustion or a heart unwilling to believe, but it took a full minute for the words to sink in. She looked up abruptly as her brain made the final connection. "But that means—"

Tim nodded once. "I know," he replied quietly. "I don't fully believe it myself, but it's the only thing that makes sense."

She offered up a weak protesting, "But surely..."

Tim had the advantage over Oracle. Not only had he had more sleep in the last two days, he'd also gone on a brutal patrol before making himself face the box's contents again. He'd thus had an extra few hours to adjust to the idea of losing his brother all over again. He sighed and forced himself to be logical – for Oracle's sake, if not his own. "No Oracle. Dick would not have stayed away this long of his own volition. He might have been upset after the Joker-thing, but he's too honest and good-hearted to just give up on either us or the 'Wing, let alone Bruce. You know as well as I do that foul play is the only thing that could keep him away from you for any length of time."

"I know, it's just..." she trailed off and ran a hand through her hair. Suddenly she had a thought. "Does Bruce...know?"

Robin shook his head slowly. "Alfie and I are gonna tell him when he comes back from that undercover mission. Until it's completed, we can't contact him or Cassandra."

She frowned and sat a little straighter as her Oracle persona slowly came to the fore and her mental cogs began to grind and mesh as she considered the path before her. "Good."

Robin's eyebrows shot up at the unusual reply. "Huh? Why is it good that he doesn't know?"

She stared at him solidly, determined stubbornness once again rearing its head in her heart. It was that same strength of will and stubborn survival instincts that had led her to become Oracle now enabled her to evolve again, to adapt and become something new in order to face new challenges. It was this strong sense of determination that allowed her to push her grief aside for the moment, locking it up in the back of her mind to emerge when all this was over – then, she would have all the loneliness she needed to fall apart. "Because I'm going to catch the swine who did this to my Richard," she swore with a calm she did not feel. "And I'm going to do it **my way**." She locked her jaw firmly. "Try and round up the first Titans; they deserve to know, and besides, we're gonna need their help."

"We?" Robin asked meekly. "I thought it was just you and me."

Oracle shook her head. "It will be, but we're going to need them to cover a few angles. Contact me again when you've got them together."

And then she was gone.

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The message was waiting for him on his answering machine when he finally made it home. He noticed it after checking on his little princess, while in the middle of taking off his boots sitting on the couch in his room. The young superhero stared wearily at the small blinking green light for a few minutes, wondering if he would have the energy to look at it before he crashed for the night. And that was when he noticed that the red LED was blinking as well: it had come on the secure line. _'...No rest for the wicked.'_ With a tired sigh, he levered himself off the couch and tried to get his limbs working again as he moved with an aching shuffle towards the table next to his bed where the answering machine was located. 

In the last three days, he had gotten about five hours sleep. The rest of the time, he'd spent ducking around government agents, firing at criminals, running in front of oncoming trains, and ducking under or around cars. He'd been punched, kicked, beaten, chased, and slammed to the ground. He'd quipped, joked, cajoled, interrogated, and snarled his way across the entire city at least twice. He'd checked his email at least five times, done his laundry, entertained Lian, tidied the house, repaired his uniforms, and reloaded his armoury. He'd doctored sprains, scrapes, friction burns, and more bruises than he cared to count. He dozed off in front of the TV, in the bathtub, under his car, and on the computer. Oh, and in-between the usual vigilante work, he'd also stopped a gang war, prevented seven armed robberies and four break-ins, broke three conspiracies, and interrupted a massive shipment of heroin.

Needless to say, he was bushed. It was all he could do to flop on the bed on his back and blindly reach over to activate the message.

"Arsenal? Are you there? Pick up if you are, you know I don't like these things."

In his state, it took the voice of the newest Robin a few seconds to penetrate. _'Noooo, I'm not here. Ain't nobody here but us sleepers.'_ A beat. _'Waz Robin doin' callin' me anywayz?__ T'Haven ain't mine for a week or so...'_ he thought fuzzily. _'I think.'_

Robin sighed. "Fine, don't pick-up. Look, something's come up here you've gotta know about."

_'Riiiiighhhhtt.'_ Far as he was concerned, the only thing he needed to know about was his bed. And sleep. Solitude had never looked so good. He closed his eyes and allowed his body to finally start relaxing even as the message continued.

Was it his imagination, or did Robin's voice falter? "Could you...get ready to meet me? It...It's about Dick."

Roy's eyes jerked open and he tensed on the bed. _'Dick?!'_ Did he hear it right?

Robin took a deep breath as if steeling himself for what was to come. "He–He... Look, you'd better just come to the apartment next to his. This is something I can only do in person."

Roy rolled to the side into a sitting position, all of a sudden wide-awake and bushy-tailed. A chill settled in his chest as he wondered what kind of news could he only be told in person. _'I gotta baaad feeling 'bout this one...'_

"Please, Roy? I'll try and send Wally by around four."

Click.

His first coherent thought all night was that he had never heard this particular Robin beg quite so shakily before – and he wasn't sure he ever wanted to hear it again either.

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Wally West was a man that lived well, ran fast, played hard, and slept like a log. That is, he slept like a log most nights. 

Except tonight.

Tonight, he could not sleep. He stared at the ceiling, his thoughts tumultuous and restless. He knew he should sleep, that he should at least be resting his mind and body to help him recuperate from a long day as the speedster known as The Flash. To him, sleep was one of the most precious things in his life, right up there with a good hearty meal and sleeping next to Linda.

Even when the rest of his life was going to hell in a hand-basket, she always kept him sane.

Tonight, however, not even the exquisite pleasure of listening to her soft breathing could calm his mind. His thoughts jumped from one thing to another, never settling down long enough for him to figure out what was wrong. He felt himself chasing his own mind, trying to reign in his chaotic brain with little success. If this kept up much longer, he swore he'd start running up the walls just to get rid of all this pent-up energy that seemed to be keeping him awake.

For what seemed to be the millionth time tonight, he clenched his eyes shut firmly and slowed his breathing. He focused as many thoughts as he could on **sleep**, focusing on that single word to the exclusion of all else.

Just when he felt himself beginning to drift off, the phone next to his ear gave a harshest sound possible: it rang.

He jerked up in the bed as if he'd been stung, instantly awake and muttering a few phrases he had picked up from Roy. He hit the switch for the lamp with more force than necessary, almost destroying it in his haste to see the trilling instrument. Uncaring that he'd almost destroyed the lamp – although Linda would certainly have something to say about it in the morning – he fumbled with the phone for a moment before he managed to pick it up and bring it to his ear.

"What?! Dis better b'good, or I'm leavin'."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, and then he heard a tentative voice ask, "Flash?"

"...I—" It took a moment for his brain to catch up with his mouth. He swallowed and began again. "Robin?"

"Yeah, it's me. Look, I'm sorry if I got you up—"

"Don't worry, 'm already awake," he interrupted quickly, habitually slurring his words in his rush. Robin only called him when something had gone wrong. "Whazzup?"

"Do you know where Donna and Tempest are? I've rung all the places I could think of, but I can't seem to contact them."

"Sure, Garthzat Atlantis. I t'ink. Donna might be home. I-" He stopped to yawn widely, again feeling the need to sleep. "I really need to sleep, but I s'pose I could find 'em if you wanted..." he trailed off drowsily, wondering why he hadn't been this tired even a few minutes ago.

Robin's voice, though, remained firm. "Could you please? You've got to bring them and Roy to the apartment next door to Dick's in a couple of minutes."

Wally yawned again, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. "Sure t'ing, I think I can find it."

"Could you get Roy and Garth first? It'll give me time to warn Donna that you're coming."

Even with Wally almost feeling awake, the suggestion immediately made sense. "Good idea. I don't think she wants me to see her pj's."

Robin chuckled, but the speedster could tell it was forced. "Thanks Wally. I really appreciate this. I'll see you there."

Click.

It was only after he put the phone down that he realized exactly why he couldn't sleep. In three days, it would be exactly six long months since Nightwing had disappeared.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGG! 

Donna Troy groaned heavily and rolled over, shoving a pillow down on top of her head to shut out the incessant noise. Still half-asleep, she curled up in a fetal position and tried futilely to reclaim her sleep. Sighing dreamily, she nestled down under the covers and focused on the images of her dreams. She had been right at the point where they'd been about to kiss...

_BRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG!_

The harsh electronic noise disrupted the half-formed images in her brain once more, sending them scattering like birds in forests will disperse at sudden movement. She sighed heavily and passed a hand over her eyes, knowing from long experience that she would never be able to recapture her dreams now.

_BBRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG!_

Still groggy, she shoved her hand out from under the covers and felt around for the trilling mobile phone. Whoever was on the other end was about to be blasted, if only for making her expose some of her skin to the fresh, wintry air.

**_BBBBRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIII_**—

Her hand fell on the cell phone and she grabbed it up to stop the annoying electronic noise then returned her hand, phone in tow, underneath the pillow. "What?" she snapped testily.

"Donna? Where are you?" came the voice of the youth she knew as Robin over the instrument, hurried and rushed, almost emotional.

"Robin," warned Donna, dropping into the 'don't-mess-with-me' voice she had picked up from Nightwing somewhere along the way as she unknowingly echoed Wally West's words, "this'd better be good or I'm hangin' up."

"Come on Donna, I'm serious," came the pleading voice through the tinny speaker. "Just tell me where you are."

Donna sighed and removed her head from under the pillow as she rolled over onto her back and flung her free arm over eyes. "I'm at home," she grumbled, "where I should be sleeping. Now would you please tell me what was so important you had to disturb me after," she squinted at the bedside clock, "my first three hours of uninterrupted sleep in thirty-six hours?"

A deep breath. "I—" There was a small pause and the sound of muffled voices, as if he'd put a hand over the mouthpiece to talk to someone. Then: "Look, you'd better hear it with everyone else. Flash'll be there for you in about a minute. Whatever you do, don't answer the door to anyone but him."

Click.

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It was three-fifteen in the morning by the time everyone was gathered, but Robin did not care that all good vigilantes were firmly in bed by now. He wasn't a good vigilante...not anymore...and never again. 

In the last few moments he had to himself, Tim took one final look around the apartment of his surrogate brother. It was exactly the way Dick had left it when he came to pack a few things before burying himself so deep underground that not even Batman would find him. The dishes were still piled in the sink, and a carton of take-out Chinese was resting precariously on the edge of the rubbish bin, no doubt where Dick had tossed it after using the leftovers as breakfast on the day of the fateful fight with the Joker. Not even the clothes Dick had tossed to the side as he'd packed had been budged from where they'd fallen on the floor – even though clothes on the floor was one thing Alfred simply did **not** tolerate.

It wasn't dusty, though – or no more than Dick usually let the place be dusty, anyway. During the last six months, Alfred had disappeared for a day or so at reasonably regular intervals. Although the crusty old butler was not revealing anything, Tim was sure the old man came to Blüdhaven to make sure the apartment was no dustier than it needed to be.

In short, it was exactly the way Dick had left it, just waiting for its owner to return...except now he never would.

Tim shook his head regretfully and forced himself to focus on the job at hand. Just like Oracle, he was determined to bring to justice the sorry little sht that had taken his brother away for good. Then, he and the rest of the 'Bat-Clan' would have the rest of their lives to fall apart and mourn their loss.

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Robin made himself shut the door connecting the two apartments Dick maintained in the tower – one in his own name, the other as Dr Fledermaus. He and Oracle planned to hold their meeting in the latter, as there was just too many memories to handle in the former apartment.

Robin closed his eyes for a moment to gather his strength. _'I swear it, bro, on your honor I'll bring down the b–––––d that did this to you. If it's the last thing I ever do, I'll make sure you can rest in peace.'_

_'Count on it.'_

With that, he resolutely shut the door to Dick's apartment behind him and entered the Fledermaus apartment to find it already occupied. Roy Harper leant with an air of uneasy nonchalance against the wall near the window as Arsenal, while Tempest was already pacing the floor with pent-up energy. Robin cleared his throat and told himself he was not nervous about his news. "Where's the Flash and Troia?"

"Comin'." Roy replied shortly, not very impressed with this young vigilante right now, despite Dick's high opinions and glowing talk. What right did the kid have to demand they assemble in Blüdhaven right now? Hell, the kid had even invoked the Wingster's name! He was determined to remain angry with the kid, despite all the sideways looks Garth kept giving him. It was easier to be angry than to consider...what all this...might...mean.....

_'Speak of the devil and here he comes,'_ Robin thought to himself darkly as a red and yellow blur hopped in the window. It was Flash, carrying one very concerned (not to mention slightly nauseated) Troia that was soon settled on the couch in the Doctor's makeshift loungeroom.

Robin cleared his throat and tightened his grip on his scattered emotions. "Thanks for assembling here so quickly, guys. I-"

"Stuff the clap trap and get to the point," Roy interrupted impatiently, his tiredness making him more irritable than normal. "Some of us have cities of our own, you know. Not to mention beds."

The barb did not have the effect he intended, as Robin barely seemed to look in his direction. He was instead staring out over Blüdhaven's skyline as the eastern sky began to lighten. He could not help but think how much Nightwing had loved to hate this festering city with all its criminals and corrupted cops; and now he was gone...

No. _'Breathe.'_ He could not allow himself to think like that. _'Focus.'_ He had to focus. _'Focus!'_ Think of the mission only. _'The mission.'_ That was all that mattered.

In a low tone that did nothing to hide the grief he could no longer hold back, Robin told them of the box delivered to the G.C.P.D., how they had found out what it contained, and then the news from the Oracle.

There was a long moment of silence when he finished.

Garth stood absolutely still in the same spot he had been in when Robin had started his tale. He stared at the younger vigilante in a horrified kind of belief, knowing without a doubt that the youth's words were true. His long-time friend was gone. _'Gone...'_

Roy leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, feeling as if the weight of the entire world had come crashing down on his heart. Somewhere during Robin's explanation, he had sunk to the floor and there he remained. His thoughts were a jumbled mass of bittersweet memories and emotions. Images of Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing kept flashing before his eyes. A single tear rolled down his cheek as Roy went travelling on his personal Memory Lane.

_'The patented smile combined with those knockout eyes...'  
'Imitating the Bat with spooky accuracy, uncaring if Batman saw him...'  
'Visiting him in rehab...'  
'Leading the team with a dedication and confidence he'd always envied...'  
'Standing up to Roy and winning with ease although at least a full head shorter...'  
'Twisting through the air like he was born to fly...'  
'The time he first saw Dick leap off a building without a jumpline...'  
'Sardonic grin and quick-fire quips in the middle of battle.....'_

"Nonononononoo!" Wally paced rapidly round the room, rambling so fast the words were slurring together. "Hecan'tbedeadhecan'tbedeadhecan'tbedead!Iwon'tlethim!" All he wanted to do was run away from this knowledge, to rewind back to before Robin's early-morning call so that he'd never remember what came next; but he would no more halt time than fly, and all the wishing in the world would not make it so. His thoughts a whirlwind, he crashed to his knees and cried for his lost friend.

Donna sat stiffly on the couch Flash had deposited her on when he'd arrived, her mind replaying his words over and over as she struggled to adjust. _'...received the package...'_ Her breath came in halting gasps that sounding more like sobs than respiration. _'...opened it without realizing...'_ Her hands clenched into fists on her lap, wanting to crush the life out of the one that had harmed her only brother. _'...the hand was carved with his symbols...'_ The anger lasted only briefly before swiftly dissolving into bottomless grief that plunged into the depths of her soul. _'...ran them through the Cray's...'_ Hot, burning tears streamed silently down her cheeks as the truth hit home. _'...second opinion...'_ Her brother was dead. _'...He–He's gone. I–I–I'm so sorry.'_

Robin stood silently in the centre of the apartment as the emotional storms swirled about him. An uncaring observer would have taken that stillness to highlight his clinical side, criticizing the young vigilante for not caring about the Titans' reactions to his news. In actual fact, such an observation was far from the truth. Robin cared, and cared deeply. If anything, he cared too much.

It hurt.

It hurt like he hadn't thought possible, to see their grief and feel their pain, and knowing it was all mirrored in his own heart. In many ways, he considered the Titans as part of his extended family, feeling connected to them by ties far tighter than those of blood. And when one of those ties was severed, it was worse than the loss of the limb. He felt as if someone had opened his chest up without anesthetic, shoving all his bodily organs aside and screwing them up into little balls, then tearing massive chunks out of his heart and throwing them away, sewing him back up without any regard to the way things should be.

The trilling of his link to Oracle slowly penetrated the haze that surrounded his thoughts. He stared at it in surprise, wondering how long it had been ringing without him noticing. Slowly, as if he was moving underwater, he activated the comm. "Robin."

Oracle frowned, concerned at the roughness in his voice. "Are you okay, kid? Did everything go all right?"

"Yeah." It came out as if his throat was made of sandpaper and his voice-box a surface to be blunted. He swallowed a few times and tried again. "Yeah," he repeated, this time in an almost normal voice. "In a manner of speaking."

"Can you put me on the big screen?"

"Sure." Robin put the connection on hold as he went over to the computer system they had installed in the apartment specifically for this purpose. It was designed to take any incoming communication and blow-up the transmitted images onto a large plasma screen TV mounted on the wall. It was a simple matter for Robin to dial in the frequency of his comm. Within moments, the electronic visage of the 'mysterious Oracle' occupied the plasma screen.

Babs took a moment to look around the room before speaking, steeling herself to look in each of the Titans' eyes. They'd taken the news pretty much as she'd expected, which is to say badly. Gathering her own flagging strength, she activated a loud electronic beep that was guaranteed to penetrate even the heaviest stupor. It had the desired effect.

Everyone present, even Robin who'd been warned what to expect, jumped at the blast of noise. Their gazes almost immediately focused on her computer-generated image – not her true image, but the images she used for those from which she hid her identity.

Garth rubbed his ears unhappily. "Give me a bit more warning next time, please," he complained miserably. "My ears were wide open and everything."

"Sorry about that," she apologised immediately. "It was the only way I knew to really get your attention in a hurry."

"Oh yeah? And who are you to talk?" Roy griped, angry at this intruder's interruption. "What's your gig anyway?"

Oracle turned towards him slowly. "For your information, Roy, my name is Oracle. I came to you now because I want you to help me find Nightwing."

For once in his life, Roy remained silent. He was simply too stunned to be seeing 'the Oracle' he'd heard so many complaints about to talk.

"Huh?" Garth looked at the screen in confusion. "B–But Robin has already told us what happened."

"We've only got Dick's hand, Tempest," Oracle reminded them, the hint of grief giving way to plenty of anger and determination. "I want the rest of him. More to the point, I want the swine who did it to him."

Always the one who led when the rest couldn't cope, Donna somehow found the strength to slowly stand up from the couch. "So where do we come in?" she asked quietly.

The Oracle quickly explained what she had in mind. In the end, they didn't take much convincing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was Tim that found out first. 

As the only active member of the so-called "Bat-Family", he found himself volunteering to make the early-morning visit to this particular civilian. Like any good graduate of the "Bat School", Robin watched the house from the roof of an empty three-story building across the street while he reviewed what he knew – which was only what the Oracle had told him, which in itself was referenced from old conversations with Nightwing and the case-files she had copied from Dick's computer – about the man he was to visit.

Joey Flaherty.

Joey apparently once had a brother, called Mully. Oracle said that Mully had helped Dick go up against a group calling themselves the Cabal. Unfortunately, Mully had been killed by Bane the same time that Nightwing sustained injuries (also by Bane) that had almost killed him. She said that Dick had once mentioned casually that the only reason he'd kept going as Nightwing at the time was, in part, to honour Mully's sacrifice.

A few months after that, Nightwing teamed up with Joey to bring down Jonathan Masters Junior, who later went by the name of Charon. The Joker had later used Charon to kidnap Barbara to force Nightwing into confronting Charon in a one-on-one fight. Joey had apparently played a role in rescuing Barbara and helping Nightwing and Batman bring down Charon, although Barbara was still rather tight-lipped about that part of her life.

Formerly a police detective, Joey generally considered himself a man trying to do as much good as he could. He was clean (remarkably so for Blüdhaven), semi-honest, conscientious, and with a big heart to match – all of which he hid behind a wealth of cynicism. Although he had now retired from the Force and had turned into a Private Investigator, Nightwing had listed him in his files as dependable and worthy of a lot of trust. He'd even given the P.I. a means to contact him if Joey needed to.

Robin knew one thing for certain: Joey Flaherty had certainly made an impression on Nightwing – and probably vice versa, knowing his surrogate brother. He smiled bleakly at the thought as he watched Joey's house from a distance. Knowing Dick/Nightwing as he did, it was hard to recall anyone (excluding criminals and corrupt cops) that had not in some way taken a liking to him with his patented grins, sardonic quips, and shining personality. Right now, it was only he, Alfred, the old Titans, and Oracle that knew the truth of Dick's disappearance – and when the rest found out, Robin would've laid long odds (if he'd cared to) that there was going to be a lot of broken hearts and crying eyes.

The amount of attention he directed at Joey's house increased when he suddenly heard the muffled voices of laughing females. His interest pricked a little at the sounds of a happy family, Robin watched the house closer. He could pick out at least two different females, perhaps three, just from the voices. Occasionally a male voice would call out something too – Joey himself, no doubt. Robin carefully shifted position so that he could get a better view without making a noise on the tin roof. On such a quiet morning as this without a single car in evidence, such a sound would no doubt be noticed.

Flaherty resided in a two story home in the Eagle Crescent area, a well-to-do middle-class suburb less than two miles from the mansions of the Blüdhaven movers and shakers in Avalon Hill. The house lay on your typical suburban rectangular plot along a quiet, well-lit street. A well-kept lawn adorned both the front and back of the property. Classic white siding and a black-shingled roof along with a two-car garage made it the ultimate up-and-coming yuppie home. There was even a white picket fence along both sides of the property.

The sun would be up in under half an hour, but Robin could not quite bring himself to care. He didn't care much about anything except seeing this mission to its end. He could wait all day until Joey was alone if he had to. The sun could well be up, or even high in the sky, before that occurred, but he would make the contact regardless. Technically, it would mean going against one of the Bat's Cardinal Rules – namely, to always work in darkness. It was easier to gain the elements of surprise and stealth that way. Robin knew this, and knew it well. Quite frankly, though, he didn't give a damn about it. Not anymore.

This little Robin was not going to bed until this mission was completed.

He doubted he'd be able to sleep anyway.

Still, he **was** going to have to move fairly soon. Crouching on a roof was all right when it was dark without a bright moon, but not under a full sun. Even in his borderline-depressed mood, Robin knew he would be far too exposed for his liking come the dawn. He would have to find some other place to keep watch on the house after dawn until Joey left for his rented P.I. office – not to mention a way to track him to the office if necessary.

Thank God he'd brought the Redbird with him. He could probably hide in it and monitor the situation from there. He was just about to leave the safety of the dark roof so that he could be settled in the Redbird before it got any lighter when some sixth sense of danger made the hair on the back of his neck suddenly rise. He hesitated, wondering for a moment what to do.

Suddenly, there flashed into his mind one of the first lessons he ever got off Batman: _'The night is a tricky thing, especially in the periods of dusk just before sunrise and sunset. When people are surprised at such times in a dangerous situation, they tend to run for cover. To be truly invisible, however, you must remain absolutely still. It sounds impossible, but remaining immobile can allow you to hide out in the open at mid-day.'_ This lesson remained in the front of his mind as he froze into place, while he waited to see what had made his instincts call out a warning.

His answers came as the outside light flicked on at Joey's place and the Flaherty's voices suddenly became much clearer. He watched as human shapes could be seen moving about in front of a window, apparently hugging each other. He found himself frowning as he watched, almost as if he resented their closeness while his own 'family' was being torn apart. He quickly shoved the thought aside, not allowing himself to consider it nor let it break his concentration.

Just in time too. The garage door was rising.

Robin watched apathetically as the people piled into the Flaherty car, only really caring that the females in the family seemed to be departing. The man remained by the garage door, saying his goodbyes to his family. He remained absolutely still as the car slowly pulled out of the driveway and turned onto the road, the headlights reaching only as far up as a few meters below his perch. It was only once the car was out of earshot and the outside light at the Flaherty residence had been turned off, the man having shut the garage door and gone inside for a few minutes, that he left his high perch in favour of the ground.

Like a whisper on the breeze, Robin melted into the shadows from whence he came as he seemed to almost drift across the street.

If he had known that he was being watched and by whom, or even of the events that would be caused by this 'social call', he would no doubt have promptly made his way back to the Batcave and would not have emerged again for a year.

Meanwhile, Joey Flaherty covered a tired yawn with the back of his hand as he reached for the TV remote, absently wondering why his wife and daughters had to get up so early for a simple two-hour trip to his mother-in-law's place for lunch. Personally, he would have waited to the last minute. It wasn't that he disliked his wife's parents...but that mother of hers sure could be a bitch most of the time. Always finding something to pick at him about – most recently, it was about his admittedly not-so-clean past. _'Why can't the old girl just let the past die?'_ he mentally groused as he surfed channels. _'It's not as if I haven't paid the price for what I did all those years ago anyway. Besides, I did it for her daughter! Sometimes I—'_

"Mister Flaherty."

The coarse but youthful voice coming from the corner of the room startled him just when he was getting on a roll. He jerked to his feet and whirled to face that direction, his mind returning immediately to the time not all that many months ago when Nightwing had startled him by saying almost the exact same words. At the time, Nightwing had come to him about a partnership, asking for help to bring down a psycho terrorizing Blüdhaven's female population. His heart lifted with the thought that maybe the erstwhile vigilante had finally answered his calls. "Nightwing? That you, punk?" he called out eagerly.

He received another shock when the shadows moved slightly to reveal a young boy dressed in a green, red and yellow costume with a dark cape, his eyes hidden by a mask similar to Nightwing's. The boy shook his head, his slightly long black hair tumbling around his face. "No sir. My name's Robin."

Joey sighed and flopped back down on his couch. _'Great. Just great. Another one to take care of.'_ He casually picked up the remote he'd dropped earlier, giving the young hero a glance over his shoulder as he changed channels. "Let me guess," he grumbled, an hint of sarcastic acid lacing his words. "Nightwing's kid brother?"

Robin swallowed hard. "Something like that," he managed, keeping his voice as level and emotion-free as he could.

"All I can say is that it's about time someone showed up," Joey continued as if the other had not spoken. "Do you know how many messages I've left for your punk brother? Let me tell you," he continued without pausing, "exactly sixty-three messages since this case first came to my attention. Sixty-three messages, all of which were supposed to go right through to the punk's gauntlets." He made a derisive snort as he continued flipping channels. "Sounds to me like I'm knockin' on his door but no-one's home." He paused, expecting some reply from the kid by now. "Not very talkative, are ya kid?"

Robin blinked, then mentally shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Actually, sir, that's what I wanted to see you about. Nightwing's missing."

Joey snorted, not surprised in the least. "'Course he's missing. I haven't seen him around for over four months at the very least." He looked at the kid out of the corners of his eyes. "I don't see how I can help you, though. He never took me to his hidey-holes or anything. Just talked to me on the phone a couple of times and helped take down a nut-cases or two."

Robin nodded solemnly, aware that he was about to take a huge risk – but a risk that Oracle had calculated was worth it if it got them to the bottom of this mess sooner. "I know. You don't need to find Nightwing himself." He took a deep breath to continue. "I need you to find Dick Grayson for me."

It was Joey's turn to have a pale face as he jerked to a standing position once more and faced his visitor, frowning heavily. _'Please tell me I didn't hear that right.'_ "Did–Did you just say 'Dick Grayson'? As in rookie 'Richard Grayson' of the Blüdhaven P.D.?"

Robin nodded again, taking a moment to phrase his words carefully. "Yes, sir. He has to Nightwing. Find him, and he'll lead us straight to Nightwing."

Joey shook his head regretfully. "I hate to be the one to break this to you, kid, but I'm afraid it's a bit too late for that. You'll need another way to find Nightwing."

Once again, Robin had the uncomfortable feeling of being on the souped-up Titan's Jet while the Joker was flying without a flight plan. Once again, he felt the world around him spinning out of control, and knew he was powerless to stop it. He didn't want to ask, didn't want to know the answers, but the question somehow emerged of its own violation: "What do you mean?"

"The case I want the punk's help on," Joey explained as gently as he could, carefully watching the youth's face for some kind of reaction, "is that of the murder of Officer Grayson. His body was found in a ditch a few days ago."

The words hit Robin like a stream-train in the chest as his heart was ripped apart by the cruel, uncaring hands of grief. He distantly felt the blood rush from his face, in the same way that he was aware of Joey asking him what was wrong as if from far away. His mind instead worked furiously, feverishly, to hold the teen superhero together even as he felt himself falling apart. He clenched his hands into tight fists to stop them trembling. Robin's mouth dropped open and he tried to speak, swallowing hard a few times to force the words out in a dry rasp, "I—He—The body?"

"At the morgue, I should think. It'll be there for a few more days until someone comes to claim it," Joey replied promptly. He could not quite see the effect his words were having on Robin, as the boy always remained in the shadows. His stare hardened, however, as a thought came to him at the emotions he thought he'd sensed in the boy's voice. "Why?" he asked, a note of suspicion entering his voice. "Are you really his family or something?"

Robin shook his head in automatic denial even as he stepped further back into the concealing shadows. His chest heaved, fighting for air as he struggled to compose himself. His universe shrank until he was alone, all alone in the darkness that greedily swallowed up his soul. The spoken words echoed around in his mind, each repetition hitting him ten times worse than before.

It was all simply too much, far too much for anyone in his position to take.

First Dick, Nightwing, his mentor, brother, protector, went to ground. Then, swallowing down his increasing worry and loneliness, he had agreed to 'fill in' for Batman while he went undercover. Just as he was starting to adjust and feel comfortable with his new role, the cosmos threw him for a loop and turned his world inside-out. Before answering that fateful call to the roof of G.C.P.D. building over six hours ago, he could never have predicted any of what had happened next. He had seen a human hand in a posted box, only to confirm through a simple fingerprint test that it had belonged to his brother. He had faced Oracle and then stared down the Titan friends of Dick, forcing them all to listen to him, only to have to turn around and comfort them when it was **he** who needed the comfort.

But through it all, he'd had hope. Hope. Hope that the hand was not Dick's, hope that he was thinking along the wrong lines...hope that this was a nightmare he could simply wake up from. It was a hope that he had not dared to vocalize or mention, but it was no less tangible for all that.

And now this... the supreme strike, the ultimate upset, the last laugh.

Dick Grayson's body had been found and identified.

All his pain and grief increased, filling him like steam in an over-fired boiler, pushing his mind and soul far beyond the point of explosion. Only his training prevented the scream rising inside him from escaping out into the open.

Without thinking, he did the only thing he could, the only thing he knew how to do:

He fled, vanishing like smoke in the wind into the pre-dawn gloom and leaving Joey Flaherty to stare in astonishment at the spot he had occupied, amazed all over again at how fast these vigilantes were able to move.

Scarce seconds later, Joey was rooted to the spot as a wordless scream of despair and denial filled the air from everywhere and nowhere all at once. He felt his veins run with ice as the bone-chilling cry rose as if issuing straight out of the pits of hell and tearing the very air asunder.

The scream continued for what seemed an eternity as Robin cried his pain to the unforgiving city. Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing, his cherished brother, was lost. He would never be the same again. His world descended into darkness even as the earthly Sun began the process of rising over the horizon.

The Light of his existence had been extinguished.

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Whew! I never knew that writing angst could be so exhausting! As always, tbc :-)


	2. MIA: Forgotten Hearts

_Additional Disclaimers:_ The only new thing is the extract from Be There With You, which belongs to Human Nature, as taken from their album, Here And Now – The Best Of Human Nature, that was produced by Columbia.

_Summary:_ The pieces start falling into place, but at what cost? The things the heroes are going to discover won't sit easily on their souls, that's for sure....

_A/N:_ No promises about when the next update will be. My family and I (three "kids", two parents, two grandparents) have moved **three times **in the last three months, and we'll be moving at least ONCE more in another month! I've written this and corrected my mistakes while surrounded by boxes and the rest of my life crammed into one small room, and it doesn't look like that'll change until around the end of May some time, when we move again. I've already lost about a month of writing, due to commitments to cleaning and to schoolwork.

_A/N 2:_ In this chapter, emphasis are in **bold** or underlines, and thoughts are _'italics'_. Also, the 'What Came to Pass' sections are all in italics. Just thought I'd clear it all up once again before we get back into the story. :D

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**ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE  
Missing In Action**

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_**Chapter 2**_  
_**Forgotten Hearts**_

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_I drive my car,_  
_And think about you constantly._  
_I lay awake,_  
_And wanna feel you next to me._  
_What can I do?_  
_My life's only complete with you, baby_  
_And feels so right._  
Be There With You  
Lyrics and Song by Human Nature

_Hit for hit; blood for blood;_  
_eye for eye; hand for hand;_  
_rat for rat; aid for aid._  
Street Code of Honor

_"On a dark night...a dark man waits...with a dark purpose..."_  
Disney's Aladdin

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Once Robin was gone, it was a long time before Joey Flaherty moved from beside the couch. Even then, it was only to move to the window. He stared out to the awakening city as he mentally replayed the costumed boy's reaction to his explanation.

In all his years as a Blüdhaven cop, he had seen many things, several of them enough to give him strong nightmares if he dwelled on them for very long. Some of the hardest cases he'd faced had disgusted even the most bent and corrupt cops in the entire station. He'd always thought that he had seen a lot in his time, but he was sure he had never seen anyone look so pale, so scared and...so drained of blood as that kid "Robin" did when he said that bit about the late Officer Grayson.

Personally, he couldn't understand why the late Officer was so important. Admittedly, he'd only worked with the Officer once before when he was a still an official rookie, and that was when Joey was leading the task force to take down a nutcase by the name of Jonathon Masters Junior – incidentally, he now recalled, Masters was the reason why he'd teamed up with Nightwing originally. Nevertheless, coincidences aside, he really did not remember much about the young Officer except that from the first moment they met, the rookie had somehow been exuding the air of being bright, confident and honest. Looking back, it was one of the most refreshing moments in that entire dark period that had ended with his resignation from the Force.

But what else he did remember was certainly...intruiging.

What had captured his attention about the Officer, even then, had happened at the Masters Manor when they were searching for Jonathon Masters Jr, at the time calling himself "Jonah" and causing terror among the Haven's female population. Ironically enough, Masters had found something that disturbed him about the rookie, because he had sworn to kill Grayson as they had arrested the psychotic criminal. He'd tried real hard to do that too, he recalled, a group of Misfits – the gang Masters controlled – once picking on the rookie as he was about to enter the apartment. As he recalled it from the replay later at the station, only the quick response of his partner, Sarge Amy Rohrbach, had saved the kid's life.

Personally, however, Joey had simply figured that the fixation Masters had on the young officer was more an expression of Masters' insanity than anything else. You never knew what could trigger those sorts of people off, especially when it came down to the ones they blamed for their...problems. In Charon's case, it had seemed to be something about Grayson's parents being aerialists in some circus.

Crazy, huh?

That came out when they tried to arrest Masters, who was calling himself "Jonah" at the time. That was also when Jonah had pulled out a gun seemingly from out of nowhere and tried to shoot the young officer. Instead of freezing like most rookies would, however, Grayson had whipped out a taser, aiming at Charon and shooting it at the maniac faster than Joey'd thought possible.

As he recalled, however, the rookie shown how 'green' he was, quite literally, once they had the felon in custody.

The only man he had ever seen move as fast Grayson had that night had been Nightwing, and that was late one night in the middle of a deserted highway. It was during a tense hostage situation on the back of a truck...strangely enough also involving Charon. Actually, Nightwing had probably moved the fastest out of the two men, but it wasn't by much. Joey still wasn't sure how two completely different men could possibly move that fast. That kind of thing couldn't be it?

Then again, there was a lot he wasn't certain about in this case.

Fore instance, he had managed to obtain a picture of the late Officer from his partner at the time of his disappearance. It was the picture in the kid's file, taken when he had graduated from the Blüdhaven Police Academy – which sadly was in itself nothing of which to be proud. In the photograph Grayson looked like a kid, barely a day over twenty, with handsome features, vibrant blue eyes, and what promised to be a lady killer smile. His Sarge, Rohrbach, had told him that she was not one hundred percent convinced that the kid was clean, but she did think it highly unlikely – with a captial 'U'. Yet she'd also hinted that Grayson had apparently obtained his place in the Blüdhaven City Police Department through 'less than appealing' means – making it look like he could be 'bought' and manipulated – even as she'd quietly admitted that she hadn't seen evidence of any corruption during the time she'd been working with him.

To confuse the matter even further, Joey had managed to sweet-talk the super' of the building Grayson stayed at into letting him have a quick look at the kid's apartment. It wasn't too hard. He'd only had to tell her his name before she let him in – apparently, Grayson had told her about him for some reason.

However, inside the apartment itself, the first thing he noticed was the thirty-five inch – something like eighty-eight centimetres – plasma television that adorned one wall, with a sound system to match. That definitely rose the eyebrows. The next thing he saw, apart from the mess of a typical bachelor, was the IBM Thinkpad Series X laptop lying on the table. For a man who was supposed be earning the salary of a lowly rookie of the Blüdhaven Force, Joey knew from bitter personal experience that Grayson had to be getting some money on the side to own such top-of-the-line equipment. To his mind at the time, the equipment the kid rookie possessed hinted at corruption even more strongly than the way the kid had entered the B.C.P.D. to begin with.

But then, now that he thought about it, hadn't that kid Robin told him that Grayson had 'connections' to Nightwing? Thinking back to the state-of-the-art cell-phone he himself had received from the costumed vigilante, Joey could grudgingly admit that it was possible that Nightwing gave Grayson the equipment. Blüdhaven's own avenging angel certainly had a taste for top-of-the-line gadgets and cars. The computer could be discounted in that sense, as Grayson probably used it regularly to contact Nightwing with the daily gossip from the Police Station...but the TV? What connection could a simple TV have to Nightwing?

Hmm. Maybe he'd better put the word out to his contacts again. This time, he would not ask if they had seen Grayson before his death. Perhaps he would be better off asking what they knew about Grayson's background and any possible involvement with Nightwing. Hell, he might as well about the costumed freak at the same time too.

His decision made, Joey turned away from the window and padded towards his desk to start making the calls. With his back to the window, he never saw the dark shape that landed near his car and began fiddling with the door.

Behind Flaherty, the picture to the long ignored television flickered for a moment before it dissolved into static. Joey was not too surprised. Even here in Eagle Crescent, a fairly respectable middle-class suburb, Blüdhaven was not one for guaranteed TV reception. Yet by the time he turned around to turn it off, the dark shape had disappeared and he was left none-the-wiser as to what had happened.

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Right on the stroke of twenty-to-six in the morning, the door to the Blüdhaven Police Station was flung open. Walking through the door was a young man hiding behind a pair of aviator shades, wearing a beaten pair of jeans and a comfortably baggy white shirt under a black leather jacket. The only distinguishing feature about him was the shock of brilliant red hair he had managed to tame into a resemblance of order.

With a casual ease that belied his exhaustion, Roy Harper leaned against the desk in the foyer of the Blüdhaven Police Department and struggled to hold back a yawn as he gave the bell on top of the desk a half-hearted slap. Only six hours before, he had been ready to crash for at least a day, preferably three, after pulling a few too many long, hard nights. He needed...no, he craved his beauty sleep, and now he'd thought he was finally going to get it. Then the phone call from Robin had come and upset all his plans. In the relatively few hours since the meeting with Robin, he had covered Blüdhaven from end to end at least once as Arsenal, and now Roy Harper was playing 'innocent visitor' to some corrupt cop that was probably high on speed and donuts.

All in all, it was just another day as a Titan.

The cop seated on the flimsy desk chair did not budge from behind the Blüdhaven Times his nose was buried in. "Visiting hours start at seven, buddy. Scram."

Roy began counting to ten softly, trying to gamely resist the urge to snatch the paper from the cop and rearrange his face so badly that he'd never need a mirror again. He drummed his fingers on the desk instead.

One pudgy hand emerged from behind the paper to grab an iced donut from the half-empty packet lying on the desk. This time, the cop sounded more irritated than bored. "No one's gonna answer th' phones till seven, bud. Now scat before I get mad."

He hit ten and kept on counting to twenty.

The top of the paper dropped and revealed an annoyed pair of hazel eyes. "You deaf, kid? Get outta hear before I charge ya with loitering and disturbing th' peace." The paper flicked back up and a page was turned.

Roy decided that he'd had enough when he hit forty. One hand reached out and snatched the paper from the cop, throwing it to the floor with unnecessary force, and he didn't bother denying the satisfaction at scattering the tabloid's pages from the desk halfway across the large, empty foyer. The rotound cop was so round he really needed to lean forward to grab the officer by the lapels to bring their faces nose-to-nose. "Listen to me, you overweight piece of trash," he growled, in full intimidation mode. "I'm only gonna say this once, so listen good."

The cop could not see the dark glare from behind the shades the man wore, seeing only his own terror reflected in the dark glasses, but he did have a good imagination. A very good imagination.

He pulled the cop a little closer and snarled, "Look pal, I've been up for more hours than I care to count, my daughter wants to know where her "uncle" is, who I've found out was just **murdered**, and you want to keep reading some stupid article. So why don't you just call Captain Addad for me, and I'll leave you in peace with your dumb paper." He held the pose for a moment longer, and then released the cop with a flourish. Not letting up on the intimidation for a moment, he grasped the edge of the desk until his knuckles were white and leaned in close to snarl in his version of The Voice: "And you'd better call him soon, flabby, before I lose my temper and do something I might not regret."

"Like what?"

Roy whirled at the strange, but iced enough to freeze hell a few times, voice that came from the entrance into the station proper. His face blossomed into a wide smile when his sharp gaze picked up 'Addad' on the police officer's uniform. "Ah, just the man I wanted to see."

Captain Addad leveled an imposing gaze at him from under slightly heavy brows. "Really?" His hard gaze flicked to the flustered cop at the desk who was unobtrusively trying to pick up the remains of his paper. "Then why the entrance?"

The Titan's smile widened disarmingly. "How else do you get attention in a place like this when you don't have any money?"

Addad's gaze turned positively glacial. "Try 911, punk," he snapped. "You might get better results." He whirled on his heel and moved to re-enter the station proper.

Even in his state of semi-exhaustion, Roy thought he knew what would stop this venture failing before it even really began. Taking a gamble, he stepped forward and called out to the retreating back, "Oh yeah?! Like the results Dick Grayson got?"

Addad froze in the doorway, staring straight ahead at nothing for a long moment, apparently coming to a decision as then he looked over his shoulder and focused on the newcomer. "My office," he ordered tersely.

Roy tossed a flippant salute and smirk at the glowering cop on the desk as he followed Addad through the door. "Seeya next time, porky," came floating back as the door to the station proper slammed shut once more.

It might have been a short walk for Addad to his office, but Roy still thought that it was a bit on the long side as he suddenly felt his exhaustion now that the burst of adrenaline from threatening the cop had faded. By the time they arrived, the other officers in the police station had merged into one long blur, and his feet did not seem to want to fully obey his brain. He didn't care what Oracle had to say about the matter; as soon as he was done here, he was going to have to crash for a few hours if he wanted to function like a human being.

Addad let him go into the office first, shutting the door firmly behind him. Roy hid his tiredness behind a confident swagger and settled himself in the chair before the desk. The only immediate thought that registered was that he was lucky the chair lacked padding. He needed the pain to keep him awake, to keep himself focused.

Addad sat behind his desk and regarded the cocky visitor with a steely glare, still angry over Roy's earlier cracks about the state of their police force – even though he knew it was pretty much true. "Okay, kid. You got what you wanted. You're in my office. Now explain what you meant by that dumb crack about Grayson."

Roy crossed his arms over his chest obstinately. "Exactly what I said. I want to know what happened to him, and why the BCPD made no effort to contact his next of kin."

A guarded look flashed over the Detective's face and the shutters closed. "I'm sorry, sir, but I can only give out that information to family and close friends of the deceased." His eyes narrowed at the young man before him. "Who are you anyway?"

"The name's Roy Harper. I'm a good friend of Dick's." _'At least I thought I was.'_ He tried not to glower at the officer at the implication that his friendship had not been good enough for Dick to consider him a close friend. "We've known each other since we were kids," Roy explained, trying to think fast enough to come up with plausible half-truths, "and he's pulled my butt out of the fire more times than I can count. He used to call me up every second week or so until a few months back. I can't afford the time to look for him since most of my time is taken up with my daughter, and...other commitments, so I asked a P.I. called Joey Flaherty about him. He told me what had happened, and here I am."

"Fair enough." The Detective nodded slowly, not thinking to question the reply. It had been his suggestion, after all, for Rohrback to contact Flaherty about the case. The P.I. would probably have more success than he would with the climate at the station being as it was. Word from above was that they didn't want the case investigated further, and as much as he hated it, he had to obey. Which meant that he didn't investigate, but a civilian could. Convinced of the visitor's sincerity, he offered quietly, "Then please accept my condolences, Mr. Harper." He paused, cocking his head slightly as he searched for the right words to express something that was always wrong. "Grayson was a good man," he finally said, his voice subconsciously hushed as he spoke of the late rookie, "and a gutsy officer." He paused once again and sadly averted his gaze. "He certainly didn't deserve to die the way he did," the Captain finished softly.

Roy leaned forward in his seat, his instincts jumping at that last sentance. "What do you mean?" he inquired cautiously. "How did he die?"

Addad sighed softly and leaned back in the chair, giving Harper an appraising look. "Are you sure you want to hear this? It won't be pleasant." _'Nothing about this mess is,'_ he thought to himself.

Roy nodded warily, wondering at the shadows that seemed to have fallen into Addad's eyes. He braced himself for the worst, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come.

"Then I'll be blunt," the Captain began, leaning forward and crossing his arms on the desk. "There's no need for you to identify his body, because there's nothing to identify." And then he proceeded to explain.

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About half an hour after entering Addad's office, Roy Harper emerged from the Blüdhaven City Police Station just after quarter-past-six on this bright sunny day looking a lot more worn and wearied than when he had entered. His steps to his car were slow and shuffling as he digested all he had gleaned from Captain Addad. When he got to his car, he simply got in and sat for a few moments with the engine idly ticking over, staring out at nothing as his mind churned. His thoughts were rolling around his head so much that even his limbs felt as if they were moving underwater. _'Jeez. How'm I gonna tell 'em the truth? How can I tell them something I barely cope with myself?'_

He considered himself a well-travelled hero. After all, as a Titan, he'd crossed the universe far too many times to count. Hell, he'd lost count of the all the times they'd "saved the world" in some part of the universe...or an alternate dimension, for that matter. He'd seen a lot, had been through a lot, and had thought that he was pretty jaded for a hero. Working for the government in his spare time hadn't helped matters. But what he'd just been told...nothing he'd been though could've prepared him for that news. It was one of the few times in his life that he'd regretted his decision to pursue the vigilante life...and the responsibility to uncover the truth that came with it. Bad enough to know Dick was gone...but to know what he knew now about how it happened...and the mere thought of it happening to his close friend and surrogate brother....

He shuddered and swallowed down the bile at the thought. He'd be having nightmares about this for weeks, now.

Sighing to himself regretfully, he put the car into gear and rolled out into the flow of the early-morning traffic. There was nothing for it but to call Oracle and get this information off his chest. _'Maybe,'_ he thought to himself darkly, _'talking about it'll make it easier.'_

Yeah, right.

Careful to keep one hand on the wheel, he blindly groped through the usual mess of fast-food wrappers and discarded notes for the spare comm system he kept in the car. It was identical to the comm system in his costume in that it could be configured to send an audio-visual signal, but today he was more concerned with just sending an audio signal. He didn't want anyone, least of all Oracle, to know how much he had been rattled by the discussion with Addad.

He found the comm system buried under a mound of empty soft-drink bottles. One of these days he'd have to try and properly mount it in his car. His gaze barely flicked away from the traffic as he keyed in the secure number he'd been given to contract Oracle.

Oracle answered the transmission almost instantaneously. She had been waiting for this call ever since Robin had stumbled into her apartment after visiting the Flaherty residence. "Oracle here," she stated in her all-business tones. "How'd you go, Roy?"

"I talked to Addad like you asked," he began, staring out at the rising sun. "We hadn't been contacted because, in between their computer network being down, Dick had listed only a Barbara Gordon as a point of contact on his application to the Academy, and she wasn't answering her phone when they called." He wisely decide to refrain from mentioning that he had a few suspicions about exactly who Oracle was.

"When did they call?" Oracle interrupted quickly, something strange in her voice...almost fear?

"Last night, about one-thirty in the morning. Why?"

Oracle took a moment to reply. _'One thirty.'_ She had gone to bed last night about ten o'clock, but then she had strangely found herself wide-awake at two when she knew she should've been out to the world for eight more hours at the very least. _'Maybe that was what woke me up.'_ She cleared her throat and forced herself to sound unconcerned, "It doesn't matter. What else did he say?"

"Is Robin there?"

"No, he told me he's going to the Blüdhaven morgue," she explained, seeing no need to provide details about how he had contacted her about six o'clock with the news from Joey Flaherty, and then promptly begged to be allowed to visit the morgue as Alvin Draper. He was proving himself a regular Bat-follower, ruthlessly controlling his grief and pain, allowing it out only to motivate him to continue the investigation. Right now, she wasn't sure whether to be glad not to have to deal with his grief as well as her own, or to hate this new development that meant he'd never let out the tears he needed to cry.

"Damn, he's going to find out anyway," he swore, frustrated at not being able to protect the youth from the harsh news to come. He took a deep breath to steady his voice. "Addad said that they'd had Dick's body for a week before they could identify it. The DNA samples they took were virtually useless."

Oracle frowned. _'Did I hear it right?'_ "Say again, Arsenal."

Roy sighed and began keeping an eye out for Dick's apartment building. He knew he was almost there. "I said, the DNA was useless. There wasn't much left that was usable anyway, because the body had gone through an exceedingly hot explosion before they found it. Actually, cause of death is listed as unknown, because they couldn't decide which particular injury would've been enough to kill him."

Oracle leaned forward and rubbed her temples wearily, feeling the weight of all the puzzles she had to solve. "Why?"

It was with great relief at not having to face the traffic any longer that Roy pulled into the parking lot to Dick's apartment building. For a long time he did not move out of his seat, gathering both his thoughts and the motivation to continue. If he stood right now, saying what he had to say, he would probably collapse and give himself an injury. Besides, the way he was feeling, he couldn't get out of the car, talk to Oracle, and keep his imagination under control at the same time. "They don't really know what killed him," he explained finally, "but it's fairly safe to say he didn't survive the explosion. Not in the state he was in." He exhaled deeply, gathering his strength to finish. "What...remains there are show signs of extreme beatings, electrocution, freshly broken bones that never healed, and some...mutilation."

"Mutilation?" she echoed softly, horrified by the images her mind supplied at what that word generally meant. She'd all too much of that kind of thing during her days as Batgirl to be able to forget it.

"Mutilation, as in decapitation," he deadpanned. "Addad didn't say much beyond that, except that they weren't sure if that was what killed him or...if it occured post-mortem."

Oracle jerked her head up. Her mouth ran dry. _'Decapitated...'_ One hand flew to her mouth while another unconsciously rubbed the back of her neck. She shuddered at the thought, moisture glistening at the corners of her eyes as her heart cried out in sympathetic pain for her fallen love.

Roy continued on stoically, his own voice a little shaky as he quickly retreated to slightly safer verbal territory. "Addad also said he tipped Flaherty about the case because the obvious suspect couldn't have done it, but he wouldn't be able to convince anyone himself."

Barbara had to swallow a few times to get the saliva glands in her mouth working again to speak. "What obvious suspect?"

"Addad said that Grayson had been causing a few waves at the station, clashing a lot with Arnot about the way things should be done. He thought Dick was acting as if he was trying to clean up the entire Force overnight." Roy grimaced to himself as he managed to get out of the car. _'Typical you, Grayson. Always trying to make things right. Why couldn't you just let things be, just this once? Maybe if you did, you'd still be alive.'_ He sighed again and shook his head to clear it. "Addad knew Dick was rubbing the wrong people the wrong way...so did everyone else, for that matter. Then when he disappeared...and they found his body...and, well, I guess most would think that someone called Blockbuster did him in."

"His real name's Roland Desmond." Unbidden, Oracle's mind supplied all she ever wanted to know about the man, almost all of it decidedly unpleasant. "He's Blüdhaven's version of Lex Luthor. Ninety-nine percent of the cops are in his pocket, and he has his fingers in just about everything that's going in that place. He's also rather jealous about keeping it that way."

He nodded, taking the explanation in his stride as his hands fumbled with trying to lock the car. "Yeah, well, Addad said that his first thought was that Desmond had killed Grayson too. However, Blockbuster's favourite method of killing is to leave the body floating down the Blüdhaven harbor with the head facing the wrong way. To Addad, it made no sense to make the body virtually impossible to recognize."

Oracle slowly nodded. It indeed did make a twisted kind of sense. "If it was Blockbuster, he'd want everyone to know about it," she vocalised softly. "A warning to the other clean cops to stop fighting his influence, or else suffer the same fate."

"Exactly. And even if he didn't do it, it was implied that Blockbuster will still claim credit in the hope of still keeping the clean cops quiet." Roy stared out at the city over the top of his car, his mind working too much and his heart too broken to allow him to really take in anything. One of the questions that burned his mind throughout the entire drive here came out in a broken whisper: "But if he didn't do it, then who did? And why the hell would they want to?"

There was a long moment of silence while Oracle digested his whispered question – a question that burned in her own heart as well. However, they were questions to which she had no answer. Finally, she cleared her throat and asked tiredly, "Is that all? Did Added tell you anything else I should know about?"

He hesitated for one crucial second before trying to mutter a denial.

"Out with it, Roy Harper," Oracle demanded, her voice lowered threateningly.

_'Just once in my life, I'd like to lie to a woman and get away with it,'_ Roy sighed to himself, as he turned away from the car and trudged around the side of the apartment building. "You sure you want to hear this? It ain't something that's gonna make the sun shine again, if you know what I mean."

"Spill it, Harper. What could be worse than what we already know?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Roy shot back, and proceeded to quote virtually verbatim the part of his visit that had left him so initially shattered as he made his way back into Dr. Fledermaus' flat through the fire-escape. "So, how about that Miss Oracle?" he finished with forced cheer. "Did I 'spill' enough for you? Or do you want a more personal demonstration?"

There was only silence on the other end.

"No? See, I told you that you didn't want to know." His piece said, he turned the comm off as he slipped through the half-open window to promptly collapse in the nearest padded chair he could find. Within moments, restless mutterings emanated from the chair's vicinity as he finally surrendered to the call of sleep.

True to the form of the way his day had already gone, however, it wouldn't be long before the slumbering vigilante would be awakened.

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White. 

Purity.

Virgin innocence, of peace and tranquility.

It was also the color of the sheet used to cover dead bodies. So clean, with no stains from bodily fluids to indicate the gruesome sights they could hide; such purity that did nothing to disguise the painful end eventually reached by all life.

By twenty to seven, Alvin Draper had been staring at it for what must surely be an eternity with no success in forcing himself to lift the cover. Intellectually, he knew he could not have been so long. Otherwise, the knockout drug he'd slipped the only employee on duty would've worn out by now – it was supposed to wear off by nine o'clock at the very latest, which was when the morgue was supposed to open anyway.

However, if there was one thing that this case had taught him, it was that affairs of the heart need not make much sense to be able to pack a powerful punch.

_'A case?'_ he questioned himself bitterly. _'Am I really so far gone that I'm calling this just a case?!'_ A moment later, he answered himself. _'Course not. It just makes it easier...to do what I gotta do.'_ He stared morosely at the white sheet covering the gurney. _'As if anything about this is gonna be easy.'_

Gathering his courage, he reached out to pull the sheet away from the body's head. His hands paused to each side of the gurney, freezing in place as his courage failed him once again. He closed his eyes and tried to control his trembling. _'I can't do this.'_ Shivers racked his body as his fear pounded in his temples. _'I can't face what's under this sheet.'_ He couldn't see this body here and now, and then not expect to see distorted versions of it every night in his nightmares for a long, long time. _'I just can't.'_ That was something he knew he would never be able to bear. _'Please don't make me do this,'_ he mentally pleaded, not even sure who or what he was addressing.

He backed away from the immobile gurney with its immovable contents, trembling and sweating heavily. Turning away from the scene resolutely, as if by that simple act he could make the spectre of it go away, he grabbed onto the nearby windowsill with all his might until his knuckles were white. He bowed his head slowly, his forehead coming to rest on the frosted glass, his shoulders visibly shaking as he tried to hold it all in.

And the entire time, in his heart burned the unforgiving knowledge that he was all they had. Not one of the Titans, not even Roy with his governmental experience, knew as much as he about gathering forensic evidence. With the Bat still unavailable on that damn undercover mission, he was the only one around who could do it. _'The only one.'_ Yet here he was, too scared and afraid to even look upon the face of the man he considered his brother. He, Robin, the Boy Wonder, was too **afraid** to look upon one more body.

It's just...that, well, he simply did not want the twisted mask of death to be his enduring memory of his idol. Dick Grayson deserved so much better than that.

Traitorous drops of moisture dampened his cheeks as his emotions swirled around him, fluctuating rapidly between bitterness, fear, love, hope, anger, and all that was in-between. His grip on the windowsill tightened still further, if that was possible, as the urge to run away from this room and his life gripped him.

_'No.'_

He was better than this.

_'Stop it.'_

The Bat had trained him to do more than simply fall apart at times like this.

_'Suck it up, Drake.'_

Instead of trying to fight it instinctively, he forced himself to deliberately relax and allow the tumult to flow...to flow out of him and away into the distance, never to return until he allowed it to. His breathing slowly evened out as he gradually regained control, while his eyes opened to stare fuzzily at the frosted glass window and then slowly turned towards the damn gurney in the middle of the room.

He moved automatically, drawn away from the window as if attracted by a magnet, feeling so surreal, so dreamlike...so blessedly detached that he could only hope he'd be able to maintain it until he was far away from this place. This time, when he approached the gurney, there was no hesitation to pull the sheet down the body with a flourish. Involuntarily, his eyes were drawn to the head, half expecting to see the handsome features he had missed so much. Despite the half-trance he felt himself to be in, he sucked his breath in deeply at the horrific sight he had unwittingly revealed.

There was no head.

There wasn't much of anything else either.

Not even he, who understood Dick arguably better than even Bruce did, could relate the shining presence of his surrogate brother to this...to this brown, charred husk that lay on the gurney. It barely even looked human. How could it possibly have once flown through the night with a fluid grace he had always envied? How could this burned, headless thing have once been the man he had always wanted to be?

He closed his eyes against the sight and tried to fling his mind even deeper into the dreamlike state that had protected him so well before. Anything to avoid the images ingrained in his psyche by that one glancing look, to stop the thoughts racing through his skull like cheetahs on amphetamines...

Finally, eyes barely slitted open, he pulled out the evidence-collecting kit from the pocket of his tatttered jacket and arranged its contents on a clear space on the gurney, then put on the surgical mask from the back pocket of his ripped jeans. Moving quickly and without thought, he gathered what evidence he could without looking too hard at what he was touching.

Putting away his evidence and the kit as quickly as he gathered it and feeling an urgent need to get **out** before had a breakdown, he still took the time to return the covering sheet over the body and give it a reverential pat before carefully moving the gurney to its original position in the morgue's holding room.

_'Sleep well, my brother.'_

Then he fled out a window and began clambering up the fire escape, moving faster and faster with every rung that he climbed. He heard exclamations of surprise behind him and below him as some people saw him streak by, but he kept running. Nothing was going to stop him. By the time he reached the safety of the roof, he was moving at a fast sprint and the trembling that had started it all was making his teeth knock together loudly. He ran across the roof, ducking over grills, around skylights and under air-conditioning pipes until he reached the remotest corner of the roof.

Assured that he was finally alone and unseen, he fell to his knees under a particularly large sheltering pipe and retched. The bile burned his throat as it came up and tears of anguish streamed down his cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the flaming pain that burned within his chest.

The entire sequence of actually gathering the evidence had only lasted a few minutes, but it still felt like an eternity. Yes, he was a professional, trained by the Bat to handle situations a lot tougher than gathering evidence from one body...but this was different. Vastly so. This was his brother, his light, his center...or at least, the tag on the corpse said it was.

He hoped it wasn't. It shouldn't be.

But it was.

And the evidence he'd just gathered would prove it, he knew without doubt.

His hands were still shaking as he pushed himself up and wiped his mouth. For a fleeting moment, he badly wanted a bottle of water to remove the vile tastes in his mouth, but in the next moment he accepted it as his due penance for all his failures. He grabbed the special cell-phone from a pocket of Alvin Draper's jacket and fumbled for the memory button holding Oracle's secured number.

"Oracle."

His eyes watered again as he heard her voice not a moment too soon and he clutched the phone to his shoulder as he curled himself into a ball, rocking himself pitifully as he sobbed the tears he'd kept bottled up for so long.

"Tim?" she asked with mounting concern, knowing right away that it was he, not Alvin Draper. "You okay? What's wrong?"

"Tell me he's not dead, Babs." He began shaking again as his stomach twisted inside him in another warning of what's to come. "Tell me that thing isn't him," he pleaded miserably, his voice choking. "Please tell me it ain't so."

And the tears continued to fall.

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The young woman sat on the edge of Pier 12A in Blüdhaven's harbor, her legs hanging over the side and swinging gently in the soft eight o'clock breeze. She had been sitting there for the few hours since dawn at the very least, but had so far shown no signs of any desire to move. More than one worker of the docks had come up and asked what was wrong, but every single one was rebuffed with a small smile and a shake of the head. In the end, they all just gave up on the apparently mute girl and went on to other things – although they weren't so ungentlemanly that they didn't quietly keep watch on her. 

Donna Troy, however, didn't quite care what they did. Garth had disappeared into the murky waters of Blüdhaven harbor at least three hours eariler, and she had promised to wait until he returned...and so she waited, ignoring those around her as she spent her time swinging her legs and staring out over the water.

It gave her plenty of time to exhaust her supply of tears. For although outwardly she appeared quite calm, inside she was crying bitterly, weeping for the life she'd lost. She'd be weeping for a long time to come, she suspected.

And why shouldn't she cry?

There had always been something special between her and the young Titan she had first truly known as Dick Grayson, then Robin, and then again as Nightwing. She had always felt drawn to the serious youth with the shining eyes, his quick intellect hidden by his own humility and laughing smile – and let's not forget the shadow of the Bat. He, in turn, had felt drawn to her, a little girl aspiring to be like Wonder Woman with a past hidden in shadows. Over the years, though, they had changed. She had found her family, lost it, then found it all over again, and eventually became a hero in her own right as "Troia". In turn he grew up, left the Bat, changed his guise to Nightwing, found the Bat again, and finally became his own man. And through it all, the bond between them had always remained, in fact strengthening over the years. Not even their falling out over Kory had damaged their friendship.

But now...now the ominous specter of death had succeeded where life had not. Now their friendship lay shattered and broken by the club of Death and Grief, shattered into a thousand tiny slivers that were slowly destroying her heart.

_'Why oh why did it have to be you, Dick?'_

It was at times like this when she could feel that the most, when she could feel the shards of their connection in her mind and heart. It was at times like this when the silence was overpowering, when being alone was almost too much to bear. This was when she most keenly felt the emptiness created within her five hours ago when Robin told her the bad news. And she knew from long, painful experience that she would spend the rest of her life dreading times like this, times when she could not face living without those she loved.

Out of them all, Dick had probably been the closest to her heart, followed closely by her dear sister, Diana – aka Wonder Woman – and her late husband. From almost as far back as she could remember, Dick had always been there for her in whatever guise he wore at the time. From even before the first creation of the Teen Titans, from before their introduction to each other as fellow superheroes, they had been friends. There was a deep bond between them that always seemed to be more than just that between friends, or even between siblings. Sometimes, she thought it was as if they were two halves of the one soul...just as she often felt with Roy Harper, but in a more pure and platonic way.

_'Why did it have to be you and not me?'_

The pain within her was great, now that a part of her heart, of her soul, had been brutally ripped away. How was she supposed to go on when all she could think of was joining him? How could she find his murderers when she wanted to kill the b–––ds so bad it hurt? How could they expect her to help when all she wanted was to curl up in the corner and cry a river that would surely drown the world? Why? Why did he have to leave her alone? Why did his killers have to target her dearest friend? Why did she have to live without him? Why couldn't they have taken her instead, sparing her the all-encompassing pain that would never leave her alone?

_'WHY?!'_

Why indeed. Why should she not cry for what she had lost, for what they all had lost? Every tear she shed was for all the years that they would now spend alone, knowing as they did that they would never again be the complete team they once there, the unit that had faced down and conquered so much. Dick Grayson, in whatever he wore, was always the link that made them whole, that made them a team. And without him, without his shining personality, there was a cavity that she knew would never be—

And then her thoughts stopped in their tracks as Tempest abruptly launched himself out of the water with a loud splash.

Biting a back a gasp, she quickly wiped away the tears she hadn't been aware of while Garth dragged his lower body onto the pier beside, shuddering and groaning painfully as he gasped for breath. "Te–Garth? Are you okay?" she asked, thankful her voice at least sounded fairly normal even as she caught herself from saying his 'other' name in public. It always better to be safe than sorry when it came to identities, especially in a place as miserable as Blüdhaven.

Chest heaving, Garth only nodded. He closed his eyes and mumbled something under his breath, the words he needed regularly interrupted by small coughs.

Donna said nothing more but watched carefully, aware he must be trying to cast some sort of spell but unsure why.

After the few seconds it took for the spell of cleansing to work, Garth's eyes slowly opened again. He spent a few more seconds just laying on the pier, controlling his breathing and gathering his strength, before he finally managed to roll over onto his back and lever himself up into a sitting position.

Donna was already waiting for him with a towel to wrap around his body. She tried a small, sad smile as she wrapped the fluffy object around her teammate's shoulders, but was still aware of how uncomfortable the smile sat on her features. "Feeling better now?" she asked quietly.

Garth nodded as he grabbed the edges of the towel and pulled it tighter around his shoulders. "Yes, thanks." He closed his eyes as another involuntary shudder wracked his frame, and tried to wrap his freezing body deeper into the warm folds. "I shall say this for Blüdhaven. I never thought I would be so glad to be out of the water."

"That bad?" Noticing his shivers, Donna wriggled closer and wrapped a warm arm around his shoulders.

He nodded, his unusual – in 'human' terms – purple eyes staring out over the bustling harbor. "Humans must have no idea how hard it is for the marine species to survive even twenty-four hours in this 'harbor,' " he sighed, adopting a semi-conversational tone to hide the emotions swirling deep within him. "The inhabitants of this city dump toxic waste into the harbor at least once a day. That figure, however, cannot truly take into account the further dumping of other waste that occurs every hour of every day, on the hour. I really do not understand humans at all." He shook his head in confused anger as he gestured at the foul, murky waters surrounding the pier. "How can they be so willing to destroy what they rely on for trading and for life itself?"

Donna shrugged and gave him a small squeeze before dropping her arm. "What can I say? I'm an Amazon." She leaned back a little, supporting herself on straight arms. "So I gather you made contact?"

"Yes, I did make 'contact,' as you say. It was fairly simple to remain only in the sections of less polluted water, it being something I would have done regardless of where the marine animals were located. That said," he sighed regretfully, "I still did not get very far."

"Why?"

He glanced over at her through the corner of his eye and gave a grim smile. "Visibility is under a meter, Donna, even in the best water. Depending on how busy the harbor is, there is at least one corpse dumped here every week – sometimes, though, you can get a couple of bodies every night for a month. Now, the bodies are always dumped in a few select places. Unfortunately, the sharks know this and haunt these select few areas, and they tend to get a little territorial. The fish I managed to contact told me that no one has ever managed to get close enough to see the bodies without being eaten themselves. Now, sharks in themselves are generally very gentle creatures, but I try to make it a practice not to talk to ones with a taste for human flesh."

Donna sighed and closed her eyes, her shoulders slumping despite her efforts to tell herself that this wasn't the end of their investigations. "Another dead end, then," she concluded softly.

Garth shook his head. "Not necessarily. We may not know if our friend's body was dumped in the harbor itself, but that is not really necessary to find the information we seek."

Her eyes cracked open and she cocked one eyebrow. "Illuminate me."

Garth shrugged and dropped the towel, clothed once again in his 'civvies' with a small spell already hiding his facial scars, reminders of the harsh life he had been forced to live when younger. "In simple terms, dear Donna, Robin was told that the body was dumped in a ditch about a week ago, so it will still a good idea to check the harbor."

"Why? Personally, I don't know why Oracle suggested we check this out. I can't make the connection between some ditch by the road and the harbor." Donna confessed, playing dumb to draw out her companion. Taking his change in garments as a signal, she silently handed him his sunglasses.

Garth grinned quietly as he put on the dark glasses he forced himself to wear to hide his purple eyes whenever he went on the surface as 'plain old Garth,' and not as the Titan called Tempest or as Garth Corin, the Atlantean Ambassador. "Only because Oracle thinks in strange ways, at times. Allow me to explain. Ditches are connected to storm drains, which inevitably dump their contents into the nearest large body of water. In Blüdhaven's case, it is the river that runs through the middle of the city...a river which itself runs into the sea through the harbor. Moreover, the storm drains only offload their contents at certain specified places into the river, and each drain has a specific number of ditches to which it is connected. "

Donna nodded slowly. "So what you're saying is that all we need to know is if the fish have noticed body fluids in the water entering the river from one of the drains during the right period...and we'll be on the right track."

Garth nodded and stood. "The details are a lot more complicated than that, but you have the basic gist." He reached down, extending his hand to help Troia to her feet. "Except that then we will then need to find out which body it was and where it came from. Still not a pleasant thought in a town with a morgue as busy as Blüdhaven's," he sighed, suppressing a shudder, "but at least its better than that harbour."

Donna accepted his help to stand then carefully brushed her clothes down. There was no telling who or what had been on the pier before them and where all of it had been before that. "Shouldn't be too hard," she mused softly, "not if we can narrow down which drain it comes from using what you get out of the fish. Combine that with whatever information we get from the BCPD and this Flaherty detective, along with Oracle's prowess, and we should be able to tell if we're on the right track."

"You are probably right," Garth conceeded quietly, "but that is not the end of all our problems."

Donna looked up at him and smiled with her mouth. "Since when have the Titans completed a mission without some problem cropping up?"

He paused and scratched his head for a moment. "Good point. I certainly cannot remember a mission where something did not go exactly to plan." He shrugged as they began walking back towards the docks. "I guess it goes to show that we are either incredibly stupid, incredibly lucky, incredibly resourceful, or all three."

"All too true. So what's the problem?"

The lighter moment past, his smile died as he sighed and slumped his shoulders. "The power surges that have been playing havoc with all of Blüdhaven's computers have also affected the city's drainage systems. The release of all the collected water from the storm water drains into the river is completely automated – no need for human input at all, unless it is to fix the machinery when it malfunctions. From what I gather, if – and I emphasize if – they get it fixed in time, the next release of water occurs at about six tonight."

She looked at him strangely. "So? Why should that be a problem?"

"The last release of water occurred about two and a half weeks ago, just before the surges began. If the harbor is any indication, I have no desire to discover what humans are capable of doing in their 'ditches.'" He shot her a pained look as they left the pier for more stable ground, the sound of their footsteps changing from the echo of wooden planks to the hard tap-taps of concrete. "Do you know how hard it is to track one small trace of human blood to take a sample of it when all you can smell is excrement?" He continued without waiting for an answer. "Let me tell you, it is one of the reasons why I like staying in Atlantis or the Tower. At least there I know the water is pure and clean when it seeps in through my pores."

She shuddered herself in sympathy. "I see what you mean."

They walked on in comfortable silence for a while.

As they walked, Donna found herself giving her companion quick looks out of the corner of her eye. Her friend had certainly changed over the years...just like everything else had, it seemed. Gone was the nervous little kid who looked like Aquaman and had an inferiority complex due to what he thought was his uselessness and clumsiness when out of the water. In his place stood a young man with wisdom beyond his years, treasurer of the Titans and what she privately thought of as their 'powerhouse' of magic. He had certainly matured over the years after he accepted his place in the world. Some things, however, would never change, like the little furrow he got between his eyes – although he always swore he'd never moved his brows to cause it – that always seemed to appear when he was worried about something.

Like now.

"That's not all that's worrying you, is it Garth?" she asked suddenly.

He heaved another sigh and smiled sadly. "Am I that transparent?"

"The furrow between your eyes gave you away." He unconsciously reached up and rubbed it, and she had to hide her fleeting amusement when it did not go away. "So, spill, what's got you worried?"

He chewed his lip thoughtfully, debating whether it was worth trying to explain the feelings he had come to call his 'danger-sense' ever since he'd trained with Atlan, Arthur's father, in that alternate dimension. With a careless shrug as if to say, 'What the hell', his semi-formal wording slowly easing into more casual phrasing as he explained quietly, "Call me pessimistic or a defeatist, but I cannot help but feel that something is going to happen while we shall be waiting for the release of water. I can sense it in the very air I breathe, like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in all our faces. I'm not sure the information we will get from the release of the storm water will be enough to make it worth our while not to be there when it happens."

She frowned as she sorted out his dire words. "When what happens?" she pressed.

Garth shrugged uneasily, and the little furrow in-between his eyes deepened. "That's just it, Donna. I do not know what is going to happen, I just know that it will...and I know that I don't really want to be in Blüdhaven when it does."

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Fifteen minutes, and it would be noon. Fifteen minutes, and it would be twelve hours since Robin's heart began to crack when he found the fingerprint's match, finally bursting about about six hours later so that the shattered pieces could fall around him and destroy all his hopes and dreams. An eternity, in anyone's book. 

Tim Drake paced around the Batcave, but his black Robin boots made almost no noise on the dusty floor as he circled the rooms. His clothes were half Alvin Draper's, half Robin's – Robin's boots, mask, tunic and cape along with Alvin's ripped jeans, bracelets, and fake earring – which made a statement about Tim's state of mind that even Alfred – who thought he had seen it all with Bruce – was hard pressed to ignore.

The elderly gentleman advanced from the stairs to the Manor to the Bat Computer, calmly bearing a tray with a mug of hot cocoa and a sample of Tim's favorite biscuits. "Master Tim, I must insist that you try my latest batch of cookies. I—"

Tim did not look up nor stop pacing when he interrupted, "No thanks, Al. I don't think I could face eating anything right now." He grimaced as the images from this morning, the body in the morgue, flashed before his eyes yet again, causing his stomach to twist within him warningly before he managed to push them away again. He shook his head, fixing his gaze to the floor in front of his pacing feet to avoid the pity he dreaded seeing in Alfred's eyes for being so shook up about one single body.

"Then at least slow down long enough to have this cup of hot cocoa. You'll find you'll feel better with higher blood sugar levels," Alfred remonstrated gently, setting the tray down by the computer.

The only word that penetrated was 'hot cocoa'. The rest just passed him in a blur. "Huh?" Tim looked up and actually took in his surroundings for the first time since he had raced in here from the morgue. The Redbird was still where he had left it, parked haphazardly on the Batcave floor. The Crays were crunching the data on the samples he had brought back from Dick's body, and next to the Crays...stood Alfred, patiently holding out a steaming cup of cocoa. He blushed. "Sorry, Alfred. Guess I'm a little more uptight than I thought."

The elderly gentleman's gentleman waited patiently until the young man took his cup and had a few sips before he placed the tray under his arm. The plate of cookies was already waiting for Tim by the console.

The worn youth closed his eyes as the hot liquid slid down his throat and collected in his stomach, appeasing an ache of hunger of which he hadn't even been aware. Another sip, and the relaxing warmth began to spread throughout his body, soothing the little aches and pains he had accumulated throughout the last twenty-four hours – doing nothing, however, for the lump of ice that had gathered around his soul. He favored Alfred with a small lop-sided smile that never reached his eyes. "Thanks, Al. I didn't realize how much I needed that."

Alfred only nodded slightly and did not turn to go as he normally did. "Of course not, Master Tim. Have you prepared your story for your father?"

Tim grimaced for a moment at the reminder before he schooled his face and gave a careless shrug. "No need. He and Dana went on another trip after checking me out of Brentwood for the holidays. As long as I'm there when he gets home in another two weeks, he won't care what I've been doing. I don't mind. It gives me plenty of time to solve this mess." He shrugged as he turned away, wishing he had not sounded like he was still trying to convince himself he was not as upset as he really was. Right now, he'd really like Jack to be there for him. Hell, even Dana with her constant concern would be nice right now. Without Dick by his side and the Bat gone on a mission, he needed someone to keep him drifting over the line. He focused on the Crays to avoid Alfred's gaze, muttering to himself, "Besides, I'll need all of that time to sort myself out."

Alfred, as always, pretended not to hear the final comment. "And Master Bruce?"

Tim checked the watch still on his wrist from his time as Alvin Draper. "If all went well, he's due back about sunset." A beat. "I think."

"Then shall I suppose that your wearing of a hole in my floor is because you are waiting for the results on the tests on those samples?"

Tim nodded absently, not really having heard the dry comment as his gaze flicked back to the large screen before both of them. "Yeah, it should be done..."

Right on cue, a muted beep interrupted him.

He shot Alfred another small half-smile, and finished, "...right about now." With the ease of long practice, he stood before the Batcomputer and clicked to remove the message that the tests were done.

The mouse pointer, however, hesitated over the icon to open the file with the test results.

Tim wavered, unsure if he could do this. _'I don't think I have the strength to go on if it's all really true.'_ He knew, with the certainty that comes from living on the brink of losing control for far too long, that it would destroy him to have his worst fears confirmed. If Dick were truly dead...then this Robin would follow him into oblivion. And Bruce....would probably be dead by the end of the year. It did not matter to Tim if Batman still pounded the streets at night for years to come. Without the only thing in his life that kept Batman from crossing the line and taking over completely, Bruce would be dead – if not in body, then always in spirit.

And Babs......... He shuddered mentally. He didn't even want to think about that.

He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. _'Do I really have the right to inflict that on them all? Perhaps I shouldn't open it... I don't want to be responsible for the destruction of my family.'_

That thought, however, faded in power in the cold light of the needs of his heart.

_'But I **have** to know!'_

He could not continue like this. His heart could not take the strain of constantly wondering if all this was some great hoax. He could not live out the rest of his life like this, knowing that he could have saved his brother and found his murderers if only he had tried a little harder. He needed closure. He needed to know that he had done his best. Even if it meant his life was over, he had to know the truth.

With that thought in the forefront of his mind, he pressed the icon to open the required file.

"Then I shall leave you to them, Master Timothy. Call me if you need me." Alfred said quietly, then slipped his tray into both hands and prepared to depart.

An infinite coldness swept over Tim at the thought of being even more alone than he already was, of being without company in the dark cave as he faced down his demons. He whirled around and called out quickly, catching the butler before he could climb the stairs out of the cave. "Actually Alfred, I'd really prefer it if you stayed. I...I need someone here to anchor me. I can't do this on my own," he explained quietly, hating but unable to change the wavering vulnerability in his voice.

"As you wish, Master Tim." Alfred nodded slightly and moved back behind the young vigilante as Robin turned back to the Crays, bending his mental rules on decorum to lay a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. He only allowed a small smile to grace his worn features once the boy's attention was firmly fixed on the computer, pleased that the boy had acknowledged his weaknesses. Timothy had grown up so much since he had first come into their lives.

Taking a deep breath to steady his beating heart, Tim began reading. Alfred watched the youth's face carefully as the pages slowly flipped down the screen, but paid no attention to the file itself. He could always read it later, if he so chose. For now, he found out all he needed to know and worry about at this point time by watching the expressions that moved over Tim's face.

First, there showed a yearning full of dread. Knowing Tim as Alfred did, he knew exactly why the young man felt this way. He yearned to know the truth, desiring with all his heart that the results would either confirm or reject his suspicions. Yet at the same time he dreaded them, fearing that he would find that this was real, that this was not some nightmare from which he might somehow wake up.

Then came the look of absorption as Tim read through the detailed lists on the results of the tests. Under his mentor, the Bat, Robin had been well trained and instructed in the ways of evidence gathering. In fact, he probably understood the results better than many of the so-called 'experts' in the field that were not related to the 'Bat Family'.

As he read, however, there came a dawning comprehension that melded quickly into horror. Tim gasped loudly and reached blindly for the chair to the Crays, grabbing it with the ferocity of a drowning man clasping a life-preserver. The chair groaned in protest when he sat down heavily, his legs no longer able to support him. Throughout it all his eyes remained riveted on the screen as the results continued to scroll down the screen.

Reaching the end of the file, Tim jerkily leant over and rested his head on folded arms on top of the console. His shoulders slumped, his eyes closed tightly, but still no tears emerged – but not for want of the release. His wells had long since run dry.

Alfred looked away, clenching his jaw tightly as he struggled to hold back the waves of despair. _'So it is true after all,'_ he thought to himself numbly. _'The young Master is truly dead.'_ There were no tears – not yet. That, he knew, would come later, when there would be none to hear his spirit crumble.

He straightened his back till he stood like a ramrod, dark eyes staring straight ahead as he reached for the reservoir of strength, the inner pool of determination and loyalty that was the only thing to keep him going through the darkest times of his service to the Wayne family. An almost-sigh escaped his lips as the familiar strength surrounded him, bolstering him and giving him the strength to continue that history of service for just a few more minutes. And those few minutes would be enough to do what he had to do...they had to be.

He swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the young man's shoulder. "It is okay to let it out, you know," he spoke softly so as not to disturb Tim's already fragile state. "Let it out, Master Tim. Give yourself the release you crave."

Tim shook his head but kept it resting on his arms. "I can't," he muttered, his voice muffled. "I've already cried a couple of rivers." A sucked-in breath. "What do I do when the wells are dry? When I can't afford to fall apart?"

Alfred moved around into his field of view and knelt before the young vigilante, wrapping his hands around the young man's shoulders. "You must not do as your mentor does, my child. Do not bury your feelings, or else they will suffocate you. Do not lock them away, where they will only become a festering burden you will never be rid of." His gentle hands slipped between the folded arms and jaw, cradling the youth's chin and forcing him to look him in the eye. "Let your emotions out, Tim. Let them flow...and then let them go. Do not disgrace Master Richard's memory by refusing to honor him with your grief."

Tim's blue eyes glittered pale but bright, though not from any emotion of joy or happiness. "He wouldn't want me to become like the Bat, would he Alfred?" he asked softly, swallowing hard to keep his voice steady.

Alfred shook his head gently. "No, he would not. Remember what I said, Master Tim. Never, ever, bury your emotions. They can no more be denied than you can deny Robin a chance to fly for one more night."

"I won't." Tim nodded bravely to show he understood and favored Alfred with another tremulous smile, this time using his full mouth even if it still did not reach his eyes. "Thanks Alfred," he spoke softly, eyes grateful nevertheless.

"Anything for you, Master Tim," Alfred returned softly. "I shall be upstairs if you need me."

The elderly man finally turned away climbed the stairs up to the clock with a heavy heart, knowing he faced the rest of his life without his shining light. For many years, he had enjoyed his life as a gentleman's gentleman to the Wayne 'Family' – due mainly to the entrance of a certain dark-haired boy with a bright smile and expressive eyes all those years ago. Even when the boy had grieved for the parents he had lost, even when his pain was greatest and Bruce most distant, the fire within the boy still burned bright. Sure, it wavered, as it would within any child so brutally orphaned, but it never faltered and died as it had within Bruce on that fateful night in Crime Alley. Ever since the boy's arrival, the Manor had always resounded with the sounds of the child's bursts of pure joy and bright laughter.

Then the boy had grown, matured, changing from a youthful sidekick struggling to keep up on his short little legs, to become a hero in his own right, respected and admired by his peers. And the light had only grown in strength, even though it had faltered for a while after the fiasco from the Joker's bullet and the months that followed. It had always seemed, though, that the flame would burn forever, resisting all of the dousing events that life seemed to throw at Dick Grayson. After the repairing of the relationship between Bruce and Dick and especially after Babs opened her heart to him, the fire that burned in Dick's eyes had seemed brighter and stronger than ever before.

Yet, as Alfred slipped through the hidden entrance to the cavern below the Manor and shut it behind him to reset the clock to the proper time, it was with the numb knowledge that despite the bright rays of light streaming into the Manor from the midday sun, the Light that had graced the Manor for so long was gone. What he had thought to be an inextinguishable light had proved itself a waxen candle, a flame that burned bright but was always doomed to die like everything else when the wax melted. All too soon for them all, the wick had been cruelly extinguished by the hands of Dick Grayson's killers.

Now the upper floors Manor could only echo the mournful sounds of an old man's pain and loneliness.

Below the Manor though, in the quietness of the cave, Tim finished wiping his eyes and resolutely turned back to the screen. He was determined to follow Alfred's advice through to the end. He had let his pain flow as much as he could; the ache within his chest that remained would never be removed unless Dick was brought back to life, he knew, and he hoped that it would therefore serve to drive him until this mess was over. If it was the last thing he did while he wore the Robin mask, he would bring his brother's killers to justice.

They were going to pay for what they'd done.

Moments later, he was looking into the comforting visage of Barbara Gordon. "Babs," he breathed softly. He cleared his throat and spoke more loudly, now all-business, "Oracle, I've got the results here from the tests on the samples I collected. I'm sending it to you right now." He clicked on the right icon and waited for the box to come up to tell him the Crays were transmitting. It did not take long.

"Got it. Just let me hook up the Titans as well before I look at it. They'll want to know the results as well." A moment's pause. "Okay, they're on."

Roy's voice immediately boomed down the line, sounding entirely too cheerful (and too awake) for Robin's liking. "Yo, Bat Boy! How ya doin'?"

Robin ignored the question, his wounds far too raw and his insecurity of where he now stood combining to forbid him answering directly. "I've got the results here from the tests on the samples I took."

Donna let out a low whistle. "That was quick. I thought such things took a few weeks to get results."

"Highest priority on the Batcomputer," Oracle answered absently, reading the file as she spoke, "can be six hours or better. Besides, there wasn't much of the sample that was useful."

"So whaddaya got?" Wally demanded.

Robin answered with an even tone and calmness he did not feel. "Not much. Just like the samples, the results are incomplete."

"How can that be?" Garth broke in, his normally calm demeanor replaced by one of subdued intensity. "I had thought that such things things tended to be absolute. Either the DNA is his, or it is not. How is it possible for it to be incomplete?"

"It's not that simple, Garth," Robin explained with a semblance of patience. "There's about twenty-seven markers in the DNA that are acceptable to use for identification. These markers specify characteristics unique to the individual. By combining the markers, we can get it accurate to the point that under twelve people out of all those who've ever lived will have the same combination of DNA markers."

"But when you don't have all the markers," Oracle picked up smoothly, "then the number of people with the same combination increases dramatically. For instance, if you have only half of the markers, then you've got to worry about over three-quarters of the people who've ever lived instead of the original thirteen."

"So how many markers do we have?" Tempest asked quietly.

"Twenty," Oracle answered tiredly. "Enough to give us a 55 accuracy on the hypothesis that the DNA is Dick's. However, it could be anyone else that is Caucasian with a family tendency towards black hair, blue eyes, and flexible bodies.

"Yeah," Robin broke in darkly, "or we could have the DNA of a chimpanzee."

"A chimpanzee?!"

"A chimpanzee," Robin repeated flatly, "or almost any other kind of primate for that matter. The DNA is roughly close enough for it to work when the bodies are decomposed and put through a fire. Batman and I had to solve a case like that only a few years ago. A serial killer was passing off the dismembered, empty bodies of various primates as his victims. The actual bodies were taken apart by the killer for personal souvenirs...and also a loose definition of organ donation for the families."

There was silence as the others digested his words.

Wally was the first to realize exactly what the youth had deliberately left unsaid. "Ewwww! That's so totally gross. Now I'm never gonna get any sleep tonight."

Garth was lost. "I'm sorry, I cannot follow this reasoning. What can be so bad about organ donation? Is that not a laudable cause? Besides, corpse dismemberment happens all the time in surface-dweller cases, I'm told."

"Think about it," Donna explained grimly. "He said 'organ donation to families'. Organs, Garth. That's things like your heart, liver, eyes, and so on. Now take that, and imagine them being...'donated' to someone you love dearly."

"Oh." The Atlantian's voice went unnaturally quiet. "I get your point." He was silent for several seconds. "So is that why we received the hand?" he asked suddenly.

Robin shrugged carelessly. "Like a copycat crime? It's possible. I don't know."

"Wait a minute!" Oracle interrupted firmly, "I just thought of something. We only got one hand, right?" A chorus of agreements answered her question. "Then what if," she continued thoughtfully, "the body wasn't mutilated like that?"

"Mmmmm," Wally agreed thoughtfully. "It would certainly tell us that it wasn't Dick's body."

"Yeah, sure," Roy broke in sarcastically, "but then we'd still have to figure out where the rest of him is to go with his hand."

"Okay, enough speculation you two," Donna cut in. "Robin, I know you probably don't want to think about this, but you've got to remember. Was the body missing a hand?"

Robin's jaw tightened and all the saliva drained from his mouth as he forced himself to examine the gruesome memories he had been trying hard ever since the morgue to forget. It took all his strength not to run away into the cave, away from the pregnant silence as he struggled for control. His eyes clenched shut as he spoke the answer as if the words had to be dragged from deep within him: "Yeah, it was."

Ever shrewd, Oracle asked softly, "Think, Robin, please. Was it the right one?"

Robin looked up at the screen, his face seeming to be carved from stone to those watching, although his eyes were bloodshot and staring into the distance behind his mask. He blinked behind his lenses, trying to stop the involuntary tears from appearing below his mask. "R–Right?" he queried hoarsely. "T–The...hand...w–we received was the left one."

"Of course, my mistake," Oracle apologised quickly, realising her error in semantics. "Was it the left hand, the correct one, that was missing?"

Again, he paused before he answered as he examined his memories once again. At the time, he had tried with all his strength not to look, not to notice anything about the body. But this line of questioning was forcing him to re-examine himself, to try and dredge up all the information he could...all the information that he just knew was going to inhabit his nightmares for the rest of his life. His eyes slid shut once more and his head bowed as he replied softly, simply, "Yes."

Pregnant pause.

"So it was his after all," Garth concluded softly, reluctantly voicing the thought no-one else could.

"Don't say that," Oracle protested, all too aware she was grasping at straws. "We don't know that for sure. The DNA was inconclusive, remember. We've got to keep an open mind here." The added thought was unspoken, but they knew it was there regardless; Oracle wasn't the only one who was in denial.

The conversation washed over Robin without him noticing. He frowned as he (reluctantly) concentrated on his memories. There was something about the confusion concerning exactly which hand had been missing... _'Come on, Robin. Think! What was the other hand like...?'_ His head jerked up and his eyes opened wide as the answer occurred to him. "The right hand was missing, too," he interrupted suddenly.

Oracle unconsciously pressed her hand to her speakers, wondering if she had heard that last bit correctly. "What? Say that again, Robin."

Robin breathed deeply and tried to dispel the disturbing images in his mind with the air as it left his lungs. It worked...partially. "Now that I really think about it," he began slowly, feeling proud that his voice barely trembled, "the body was missing both hands." He paused for a moment, and he shuddered as another disturbing detail arose in his mind. "Actually, the head was missing too. I didn't get as far down as the feet."

Silence.

This time, it was Donna who finally spoke the thoughts on everyone's mind. "Wait a minute. If both hands were missing...then where on earth is the second one?"

"And where's the head?" Oracle asked softly.

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_Somewhere in the Gotham–Haven Corridor, at that exact moment..._

It is said in some circles that even when the sun was shining down from on high and shadows were virtually non-existent, there was still plenty of places where the darkness not only over places but also people. Yet while there were many that were ruled by the dark, there was only one who ruled it completely.

To no one else did this most fickle of all mistresses come when called. To no other did the Dark allow itself to submit to. No one, and no thing, would ever manipulate and mould the Darkness like he could. The others might only operate under the shadow of night for their own purposes, Bat and Criminal alike. They could hide in it, love it and always live for it....but the darkness always left them with the rise of the morning sun.

But not the Black Phoenix.

It was he who was loved by the Dark. It was he who was hidden by Darkness. He was the one that the Darkness lived for. For no one else did it exist. It was all for he.

For no one else.

No one.

None.

Not even the Bat, the so-called 'Dark Knight' could compare. Where the Bat disappeared at the rising of the dawn, the Black Phoenix simply created his own little patch of night in which to while away the daylight hours. While the Bat hid in the shadows, the Black Phoenix lived in the shadows he wrapped around himself like a garment. When the Bat seemed a creature born of darkness, the Black Phoenix was the darkness.

The Bat, to turn a phrase, was only a poor shadow of the reality.

As such, he was not worthy of living. Batman was the only one out of all his enemies that the Black Phoenix had sworn himself to destroy without mercy. And why shouldn't he, after what the Bat had done to him?

That was why he was now pouring over this, his latest project.

To his mind, it was an ironic moment. It seemed very fitting that just as he had arisen from the ashes of a bomb from the Bat, so too he would use a bomb to destroy Batman. Fire had created and tested him, and his Fire would recreate and test his enemies to their limits.

Perhaps the Bat might even emerge anew, in the same way as he himself had assumed his new form from the ashes of his past. For the ones who were worthy of joining him, the ones with a flame of power burning within their souls, he knew his Fire would not harm these. Rather, he would be able to release that inner flame and offer them the great privilege of joining him in his Quest. If they refused...then they would join the unworthy, the ones he had no use for. These would be cast off, left to suffer destruction by the orange flames of True Fire, and he would use their ashes to remake the world anew.

He was, after all, a generous man...and generosity was a relative term.

After all, it was the law of the streets that punishments should be as 'blood for blood; eye for eye; hand for hand,' was it not? In that light, even the rather 'extreme' gesture of removing Nightwing's hands had been perfectly legal and just...especially considering the so-called 'vigilante' had done the same to him when he'd been at the other end of the knife all those months ago.

Besides, he had no plans to do to Nightwing's girlfriend Barbara Gordon what the scum-sucking vigilante had promised to do to his.

Now that was being generous.

With another twisted (entirely sane) smirk, he returned to the plans before him. In some ways, he hoped he would not kill the Bat with this project of his. The plans now in motion against the Bat were going to blow his mind right of this galaxy if ever it was here to begin with...

Besides, he did so want to be there to see the expression on Bruce's face when he saw what had happened to his precious 'ward'....

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_What Came To Pass II_

Don't move; don't even breathe.  
Don't think; don't even recall.  
Don't feel; don't even try.  
Just don't.

_He lay on his back, staring straight up into the distance through half-open eyes. He dared not even try to move, to soothe that annoying itch on the very tip of his nose...or what was left of his nose. Even if his life depended on it, which it did, he could not...would not...move._

_Oh, he was not tied down or anything. The Bats had finally stopped doing that. There was no need to tie him up. Not anymore._

_He might not remember much about their "sessions" together, but he recalled enough to know that he did not want to know the rest. All of what he did know was shrouded in mists of pain and suffering, but still his memories spoke to him of silent watchers to his unspeakable torments, of electric touches that would leave him shaking and crying, of whispers so tempting but ultimately resulting in the destruction of his soul if he obeyed them._

_Had he broken? Had he obeyed those whispering calls to divulge what he knew?_

_He could not recall._

_Everything seemed so hazy near the end, when he'd been hurting so much he could not even think without his brain aching. For some reason, he was not even sure it really mattered._

_Would they have left him like this if he had broken? Wouldn't the Bat-Clan have stopped the agonizing techniques as soon as he broke, only inflicting further pain to keep him talking?_

_No, he had not broken...at least, he did not think he had. If he had, surely there would've been no need to— to—_

_No. It was better to not even think about **that**._

_A soft whimper escaped his lips as his limbs jerked spasmodically. He winced in response, even though he was long since past the point of being embarrassed or shamed about the noises he made. In this case, though, he had an excuse... The torment of a simple muscle spasm created more than enough excruciating sensations that his normal controls failed him._

_Had not he always been told that pain was a good sign, a sign that he was alive? He'd always thought it was bad, 'cause all his nights seemed to end in some kind of pain. It was a moot point now, though. Good or bad, he still could not escape it. He could not run away from it anymore than he could fly._

_He couldn't fly; he hadn't been able make all his love's worries disappear, to let her soul fly free into the heavens she had loved so dearly._

_Not anymore._

_Not without any hands, at any rate._

_As if they heard his thoughts – but how could they when they weren't even there? – a wave of hot, biting pain suddenly swept up his arms. Gods! If felt like his hands were immersed in a vat of fiery coals and— and—_

_He paused as the thought sunk in._

'Phantom pain,'_ he realised dully. _'Isn't that a good sign?' 

_He was not sure anymore. He could barely remember what his life had been like before his capture, what it was like to be without pain, what it felt like just to live, let alone what he'd learnt at school years ago. Memories of his past, of before this living torment, where blurred and jumbled in his mind, pushed aside and forgotten as he devoted more and more of his resources to simply surviving. For that matter, he could not remember when he'd last eaten or drunk anything. His memories told him they'd kept him alive using IVs to keep the nutrients up to him, along with all the drugs._

'Oh Gods, the drugs...' 

_He shut his eyes, groaning as he gave an involuntary shiver at the thought. The drugs had been horrendous. He'd been loaded up with many spices and hallucinogens that would've made even the Scarecrow blush in shame. They'd fed him so many drugs that he knew he'd be addicted to heroin, marijuana, speed, cocaine, and all the other drugs in the spectrum by the time he got out of here...if he ever left except in his own coffin._

_Change that. He knew he was already an addict. The shaking and cravings so powerful that they rivaled the agony from his lost hands told him that. He'd probably been addicted from the very first dose they gave him, the one they said was the hefty dose of morphine to get him "needy."_

_The was also the last time he'd been given a painkiller in any shape or form. At least he was not addicted to painkillers. He'd need a whole truckload of them if he ever got out of here alive....._

_But out of them all, though, he would have to say that the hallucinogens had been by far the most unpleasant. He'd relived his life all over again, but this time it was far worse. He never seemed to be able to move fast enough, to warn everyone in time, or even just to think fast enough. The words were clear in his memory, in his thoughts, but they seemed to echo in his mind, repeating and fading and increasing all at the same time._

_In some ways, though, he would've preferred the hallucinations to this withdrawal. Even Nightwing and the Bat would've been hard put to resist the drugs in the quantities that they'd been pumping into him. Maybe that was why the Dark Knight and his 'sons' did it in the first place...they knew their captive would have no resistance._

_So here he lay, trying desperately not to move, fevered and shaking in a painful mix of infection and withdrawal, trembling with the fear that the Bat would soon return...hoping Nightwing only been joking when he mentioned his 'going away gift'...._

_His eyes jerked open with a start._

'The bomb!' 

_Careful not to move his head too quickly, he cast his eyes around, looking desperately for the 'gift' they'd left for him._

_'It should be here. He said it would. He was going to put it in here, right where I could see it. He told me. He—' _

_He saw it, located just far enough away that he had to twist his aching head to see it, and right away his heart sank._

_Only five seconds left to live._

_Even if he still had his hands – and he shuddered at another jolt of pain from his missing extremities – he would still be hard pressed to make it out of here in time. He could not even hold a jumpline in this condition anyway...Batman had broken most of the bones in both of his hands before Nightwing later removed them._

_Not to mention the fact that he doubted his damaged spine or his broken legs would be able to stand up to the strain his escape would put upon them._

**_Four._**

_How would he escape anyway? It was not like he had a costume like they did with grappling hooks or in-built jumplines, or even the remnants of one. Come to think of it, he was not even sure what he'd been wearing when he'd been captured. Everything was so hazy..._

_Except for this, his last few seconds of life._

_And there was something else...something he had to remember..._

**_Three._**

_A memory...of just before they left. They'd been laughing, joking about something. He scrunched his forehead up as he tried to concentrate, somehow knowing it was important. If only he could remember!_

_Suddenly it hit him, and he almost sat up at the shocking, unsettling thought._

**_Two._**

'M'love!'

_He let out a choked gasp as he quickly lay back down, his heart beating frantically and his eyes darting around feverishly. Not even the agonizing pain that shot throughout his body was able to compare to the pain in his heart. That was what Nightwing had been joking about...about bringing his Love back here...and even if he did not survive_ _their little gift, Nightwing swore they'd make him watch while they...while they...they..._

**_One._**

_He grimaced and let out what would be his final breath, forcing himself to calm down. It did not matter. There was no time to get out, or even to leave some kind of warning. How could he? His comms had been confiscated just after his capture, and it was not exactly like he could write a farewell message anyway._

_He turned his despondent gaze back to the timer on the bomb as he watched the final second tick down. A single tear trickled down his cheek at the thought of his Beloved forced to look up his broken, burned body...of her being treated like—_

**_Zero._**

_The ground rumbled and shook as the sound of the explosion thundered throughout the confines of the room he lay in. The shockwave came first, rapidly covering the distance between he and the epicenter of the explosion, and then it was ripping through his abused body and sending him tumbling towards the far wall like a limp rag. He let out a pained cry as he came to rest against the far wall, jerking uncontrollably as the movement sent another agonizing spasm to wrack his body. And then he glimpsed the wall of fire advancing towards him, the heat emanating from the orange flames already vaporizing the tears of sorrow streaming down his cheeks._

_His final coherent thought, before he surrendered to the painful fire overcoming him, was that perhaps some things were better off forgotten after all. _

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Well, what do you think? Think you know where it's going? ;-)

As always, tbc...


	3. MIA: Death In The Darkness

_Additional Disclaimers:_ See the first chapter for the essentials. The 'HotWing' site is a reference to _Chris D_'s awesome Cat Tales stories. The lyric extract is from Hate Me, Shake Me, Break Me, which belongs to Savage Garden and the record producers. I heard it on the radio and it just seems to fit so well to this chapter... :)

_Summary:_ While another family is put under threat, the Batman arrives home...but to what reception? Meanwhile, the heroes find their path leads them to Nightwing's Lair...but the surprises awaiting them there aren't exactly what they were hoping for.

Which leads me to this warning: The final scenes parts that I've italicized are the sole reasons why I've kinda made this fic an R rated one to be safe, even though the rest of this fic is definitely PG13...and I honestly didn't mean to write it that way. A certain plot bunny from another writer grabbed me and wouldn't leave me alone, then kept on multiplying as I typed until I had an infestation on my hands, and what you see before you is the result. You've been warned, listen to me or not as you wish. I'll try and cover the basics next chapter for those that miss out. :D

Jim G, this is for you, its your 'reward' for feeding me the bunny. :D

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**ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE  
Missing In Action**

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**_Chapter 3  
Death In The Darkness_**

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_So break me, shake me, hate me, take me over_  
_When the madness stops then you will be alone_  
_Just break me, shake me, hate me, take me over_  
_When the madness stops then you will be alone_  
_So you're the kind who deals with the games in the mind_  
_Well you confuse me in a way that I've never known_  
_You confuse me in a way that I've never known_  
Hate Me, Shake Me, Break Me  
Savage Garden

_Ignorance is bliss.  
_The Matrix

_On a dark night . . . a dark man waits . . . with a dark purpose . . ._  
Disney's Aladdin

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It was with a heartfelt sigh and a cracking of her knuckles that Barbara Gordon pushed herself away from her computers. She stretched her cramping muscles luxuriously, only to wince as her eyes fell upon the digital clock bearing the time. Twenty-five minutes past one in the afternoon. Almost twelve whole hours since her world imploded on itself.

It was bad enough that last night she had managed just over fours hours of sleep after two days of solid coding. Then, in the early hours of this morning – at exactly two o'clock in the morning, to be precise – she had received the call from Robin that had shattered her world. Her despairing hope of Dick's return had become full-blown grief in under two seconds, yet she knew she had only felt the tip of the iceberg when it came to the depth of desolation and sense of loss that ran throughout her heart. That was why she had been on the go ever since...she dared not give herself enough time to reflect on what she had lost with Dick's murder.

Oracle didn't have the time to let Babs fall apart.

However, now they – as in Robin and the Titans, not Oracle – had all decided that they needed a few hours of sleep if they wanted to find any more clues or answers, so Oracle was being put to rest – at least for a few hours. Barbara now had no choice but to face everything she had been holding back for so long.

Resolving to put it off for a while longer, she rolled her chair into the kitchen and blindly pulled down a mug, not caring which one she picked...until she looked down and realized what she held.

It was Dick's favorite mug, the one with the cute little Nightwing cartoon on the side and a caption that still brought a rosy tint to her cheeks and always made her think about the site dedicated to the study of Nightwing's butt.

She had picked it up at some dingy garage sale she could barely remember, and then she had carefully cleaned it and saved it for Dick's upcoming birthday. About a week later, the Joker invaded her home and stole a part of her soul when he broke her spine with his bullet. In the chaos that had followed, she had completely forgotten about the mug, only finding it again when she moved into the Clocktower...in fact, it had been nestled at the bottom of the very last box she had unpacked. She had finally worked up the courage to give it to Dick a few birthdays ago. Needless to say, he had been highly amused about her little find, and had used it religiously whenever he visited her apartment ever since. However, on the day he buried himself away from her and from the rest of the world, she had shoved the mug into the very back of the cupboard, swearing she would wait patiently for his return, not getting it out again until he came back to her and to their love.

Waiting had always been one of the things she found hardest to do. Now, especially now, she did not want to wait any longer; she did not want to have the time to think, to feel. Not now. There had been so many things they had both left unsaid...so many things they had simply assumed the other already knew...so many things she wished they had done...

And now she would have forever to dwell on them, to wish she could turn back the clock and stop this entire disaster before it ever happened...

It was ironic, really. Now he had returned, but only a part of him in a cardboard box...and she had gotten out the mug.

She let out a loud incoherent cry as she suddenly whirled and threw the treasured mug with all her might into the wall, feeling a bright, cleansing pleasure when it shattered into a million tiny shards. It was only fair that it should shatter, that it should break apart just like her heart already had.

She needed more...more shattering, more things to throw, more feelings to cleanse...

HOW _DARE_ HE LEAVE HER ALONE!

The china plate on which he ate their last meal together.

HOW **DARE** HE DO THIS TO HER!!

A glass tumbler this time, the large one she kept especially for him.

HE SHOULD **NEVER** HAVE LEFT HER LIKE THIS!!

The vase from the kitchen table he had given her in anniversary of something she could not recall right now.

WHY COULDN'T HE **_SEE_** SHE NEEDED HIM!!

She threw the vase harder than all the rest, but this time there was no cleansing pleasure when she saw shatter and join the growing pile of shards on the floor. She glared at the pieces of china darkly, as if they were the cause of all her woes and not just a sign of her deep and painful anger. Her chest heaved and her breath came in panting gasps from her exertions, but she didn't care.

_'It just isn't fair.'_

She didn't care that her cheeks were wet, that her gasping breaths were actually desperate sobs, that her hands were shaking even as they gripped her knees until her knuckles were reddish-white.

_'Why couldn't they take me instead? Why couldn't I die with him?'_

She didn't care that the mementos of some of their happiest times together now lay only in pieces, shattered and broken beyond repair.

_'Why did he have to leave me alone? Why did he have to die?'_

She didn't care that she almost wished she had never broken his mug.

_'Why did I have to be so lost without him?'_

She only cared for her heart, lying within her in pieces, a thousand little splinters lodged so deep within her soul that the ache was incalculable. She cared only about the pain that would never leave, the emptiness within her that would only grow and grow and would never be filled, of the swamping loneliness that enveloped her, of having to face the rest of her life without him and without his love and soft words to guide her way.

_'Why did it have to be him?'_

But she also cared about the anger lodged deep within her, anger against him for leaving, against the killers for doing it, against Robin for not reporting in before Dick beat the Joker to death, against Cassandra for saying nothing, and against the Bat for God-knows-what...but mostly the anger was aimed at herself for letting him go in the first place.

_'WHY?!'_

A hard tap-tapping broke her out of her tirade just as she was feeling ready to start throwing again. She jerked her head up to stare at the security monitor mounted next to the fridge – in particular the monitor linked to the camera above her front door – and immediately relaxed a little. At the door was a shivering Tim Drake, knocking on her door for all he was worth.

It took her a few seconds to compose herself, to straighten her disheveled clothes, to tuck her fly-away hair behind her ears, and to let the color of her cheeks change into a more normal (calmer) tone. The youth entered as soon as she rolled over and pulled open the door, wordlessly slipping past her to curl up into a ball on her couch and stare at the silent television while he slowly rocked himself.

Barbara remained where she was for a moment, holding open the door to an empty corridor, staring at where he had been standing. After a long couple of seconds she softly swung the door shut as if it was a fragile stick of dynamite that would explode if she dropped it, then activated the security system before slowly rolling herself to the couch.

"Tim?" The tentative question was spoken so softly it was almost lost as it hovered in the air between the two companions and close friends.

Tim only shivered and continued staring at the blank TV as if it held the answers to all his problems. "Can't sleep..."

Trying hard not to startle him, she carefully reached over and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" She winced inside when she heard her own words. _'What's wrong?'_ she mentally, than immediately answered herself wearily. _'Try everything.'_

He closed his eyes and tried not to flinch at the touch. "Bad dreamin'..." He shuddered, pausing a moment to shove vivid images aside once more, and then muttered into his folded arms, "And he's coming back tonight." There was no need to explain who he was. They knew.

Bruce. Batman. Take your pick. Neither was an appealing prospect.

"When?"

It took a bit of careful maneuvering to get her chair close enough to let her transfer her body to the couch, but she managed – she always managed. She had to. Once she was settled, she reached over and wrapped her arms around the boy's shaking shoulders, pulling him closer until his head rested on her lap.

She had to close her eyes at the sting of pained remembrance... Whenever he stayed with her overnight, Dick would always want to curl up against her on the couch, resting his head on her shoulder or lap as he dozed away the hours of darkness. It had to be uncomfortable, but he would always smile at her in the morning with his grin at its highest wattage and tell her it was the best sleep he'd ever had.... She swallowed hard and tried to hold back the tears with the strength of her will, but still one traitorous drop emerged to trickle down her cheek.

"Three hours, I think," Tim muttered hoarsely, pulling himself in tighter. "He's coming in three hours, and he's gonna kill me."

He closed his eyes and snuggled in closer, desperate for companionship but unaware that she was silently crying. Even if he had known, he probably would not care. It wasn't that he did not love her... Hell, he loved her with all his heart. She was the big sister he had never had, the mother he had been denied, the friend and confidant he missed in his father. If possible, he had loved even more to hope that she would one day marry the man he considered his big brother... But these last twenty-four hours had pushed him to his limits. He had run the gauntlet of emotions, and he wasn't sure he had much left in him to feel. In his heart there was so much pain, so much grief, so much hurt, so much anger, it was all he could do just to hold the pieces of himself together.

Babs leaned her head back and closed her eyes wearily. "Why would he kill you?" she asked softly, her voice wavering despite herself.

He continued vacantly staring straight ahead, not game enough to meet her eyes. If he did, he knew he would see in them the grief that was mirrored in his own...and he knew he would break down completely. "Cowardice," he replied hoarsely (shamefully).

She frowned at the non-sequitur. "Cowardice? How can you be a coward?"

"I can't face 'im," he murmured softly. "I don't wanna be the one to tell him."

Using the hand resting on his shoulders, she slowly stroked his thin sideburns, trying to soothe the torment within him with what little she had to offer while she figured out how to reply. He closed his eyes at the gentle movements, slowly allowing the ball he had curled himself into to relax. A little.

"I don't blame you," she finally replied just as quietly. "I wouldn't want to tell him about Dick either."

He was silent for a long moment, thrown by her admission. "Why?"

There was silence a moment as she gathered her thoughts enough to figure out how to say what she wanted. "Remember Jason?"

She felt him nod on her shoulder. How could they forget?

"When he died, Bruce was...furious, for want of a better term. It was like Batman-squared, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week..." she explained softly, her eyes distant as she remembered those awful days. "When he found out that the Joker was absolved of his crimes when he managed to became the UN ambassador...well, the only reason the Joker was still alive to later resign his diplomatic status was because Superman had to physically stop Bruce from getting too close."

Tim's eyes jerked open and he stared at her in alarm. "You mean he wanted he wanted to kill the Joker?!"

"Cold-blooded premeditated murder," she confirmed. "And I know for a fact that Dick and Alfred are the closest ones to him, the only ones he's fully allowed inside his heart. You and I are about halfway there, but Jason..." she sighed and shook her head regretfully, "...he didn't have the time to make it far past the surface."

Tim was silent as he absorbed her words. "Oh."

She shook her head and suddenly smiled bitterly. "Then again, you never know what to expect with Bruce. Maybe we'll be lucky and all these months that Dick's been gone might have already prepared him for the fact that he's not coming back."

Tim forced out a strangled laugh. "Yeah, and maybe this is just some nightmare I'm gonna wake up from."

After that, they fell into a companionable silence neither tried to break as Barbara kept absently stroking his face. Her mind was far away, deeply immersed in kinder days lit with a brilliant smile and blue eyes shining for her that had never dimmed, of simpler nights and far simpler emotions, when they would just curl up on the couch and wait out the dark.

She looked down after a few minutes and smiled softly. Her gentle touches had managed to do what their talking had not. Tim was fast asleep on her lap, and she could tell by his slack, relaxed expressions that the nightmares were leaving him alone...for now.

With an ease born of long practice, she was careful not to disturb him as she reached over and grabbed the blanket she kept on the couch and pulled it over the worn-out youth. That done, she leaned back with a small sigh, closed her eyes, and tried to forget that it wasn't Dick's face under her hand.

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Twenty minutes to four.

One day that had lasted far too long.

There was nothing like mindlessly driving somewhere – anywhere – to take one's mind off one's troubles. So Tim drove his Redbird automatically, devoting only a small portion of his mental capacity to staying on the road and on track, preferring to allow the rest of his tangled thoughts to simply wander.

It felt strange, really. He normally wasn't allowed to just let his thoughts just drift – except in meditation, and sometimes not even then – as there was always something that needed his immediate attention.

It was refreshing to not have to worry about anything. In some ways, though, it was too refreshing. It made him wonder just how much stress he had been under lately. Looking back, Tim could see its increase, but so gradually it had built upon him that he had never noticed it until now. It all started about five and a half months ago, back when they were still expecting Dick to return to them at any moment.

Bruce had been his normal chirpy self, which is to say that he had still been subconsciously blaming Robin for not reporting to Oracle in time to stop Dick crossing the all-important line they drew between themselves and those they fought against. One month of the oppressive silences that only the Bat could inflict had been more than enough, so Tim had quietly changed into his Robin costume and gone to the Young Justice headquarters to just get away from the Manor and have some quiet time to himself to think.

So of course a problem had come up that only Young Justice could solve, so he'd promptly led the team halfway across the galaxy and back in order to save the universe from a fate worse than death. It was the usual 'save the universe mission,' but it was also one of those 'bending' trips, as he had come to call them in his mind – the kind that bend not only the mind but time as well. They had only been gone one month by his reckoning when they arrived back in one piece but worse for wear, but Alfred had calmly informed him later that it had really been one week.

During that 'month' he was away 'saving the universe,' it had seemed that everything went to hell in a hand-basket.

The Cave had been broken into, but they never did figure out if anything was taken. The JLA monitor womb had become the casualty of a supervirus that wiped out most of their data. Spoiler had decided that their on-again-off-again relationship was now officially 'off' – and told him so when he had shown up at her place for a long-awaited date.

As if that was not enough, some unknown entity had decided to play havoc with Gotham's power distribution systems and was knocking out almost all electrical systems in the city with random patterns of surges and blackouts. Barbara herself had only narrowly avoided severe damage to Oracle's extensive digital systems, but she might as well have been knocked off-line because she – along with everyone else in the city – could not even plug-in a power cord to a simple kettle until all the surges and blackouts had stopped.

It was chaos, to say the least. It was like No Man's Land all over again, but at least this time Arkham had managed to keep all its prisoners in their cells. All told, Gotham lost at least a year's worth of data overall, but it was much worse in the places where they'd been neglecting to back-up their systems.

Even though it operated on a separate, isolated power grid to the rest of Gotham, not even the Cave had escaped unscathed. Even there, they'd lost over one month's worth of files before they managed to contain the damage. However, what had made the whole thing far worse was that while they caught up on the files they lost and did all the investigating they had already completed, he and Bruce still had to cope with assisting the Gotham Police Department in preventing unscrupulous people from submitting fraudulent data as the city tried to reconstruct what they had lost.

Tim still was not sure that they had managed to catch everyone, but by now it was far too late for second thoughts. They could only sit back as everything slowly came back online, and hope like anything that they had been successful.

It had been a good two and a half months after the power fluctuations began before everything started to settle down once more into Gotham's definition of 'normality,' although it really did not stay calm for very long. Then again, it never did. There was always some disaster beckoning on the horizon, and it was no different then.

Within two weeks, Bruce had announced without warning that he needed to go undercover to wrap up a case he was working on. He told Tim/Robin that he would be gone for a while, that he was taking Cassandra instead of Robin, and that he was not sure when he would be back, but no matter what don't try to contact him 'cause he'll contact him if he needed help – which he wouldn't, especially from Robin – and he'd better not let Gotham burn to the ground while they were gone if he valued his health.

Not in so many words, of course, but the Bat had never been an outstanding conversationalist. Besides, the message was undeniably there that both Tim and Robin had a lot of work to do. Bruce still did not trust him, and Batman trusted him even less.

So, like any good little partner of the Bat, he had done exactly as he was told and stayed put. After all, how hard could it be to look after one city?

As it turned out, it was a lot harder than he had thought possible. It was bad enough that he was not as highly respected as the Bat by the average criminal due to his bright costume...but then the Fates had decided to give him a whole new complication. Batman had ordered him to keep the legend alive, to keep fear in the night and the respect in criminal's minds. Period.

And that meant pretending to be the Bat.

Simple, right?

One problem: Tim might be in the middle of his growth spurts, but Bruce had still towered a good couple of feet above his head. Even when in costume, he really only looked the part if he stood on stilts all the time . . . and you just can't fight and wear a pair of stilts at the same time, can you?

Besides, he did some serious damage to the muscles near his shin and the cartilage around his left knee during the first night he'd tried to be the Bat. It was hardly enough to prevent Robin taking to the skies each night, but Leslie (and the pain) had absolutely forbid him from doing anything more strenuous than a brisk walk and one tumble per night – be it through rolling out of the line of fire, or through a simple somersault – until his leg healed. Using grappling lines all the time had never been such a pain.

So he'd had to seek help elsewhere. The remaining Titans were out, because none of them were as aware of how the Bat worked as he would prefer. Which left the JLA, but Superman was out – to Tim's mind, the build was slightly wrong, and sometimes you just can't hide superstrength – and Green Lantern was uncontactable. That left J'onn Jonz, who was probably the only one sufficiently familiar with Batman's methods and able to look the part. After all, even Batman had little to hide from someone that could phase into your body and read your thoughts before you thought them.

It had worked quite well for a while – surprisingly well considering J'onn and Bruce tended to have a few philosophical differences more often that not. That is, it had worked well until the alien came down with some kind of weird Martian Virus within the first two weeks that had put him out of action ever since. Thankfully however, the JLA had been called out at about that time to deal with some interstellar crisis. Seeing as it was common knowledge that Bats was a part of the JLA's current incantation, his absence could pass without suspicion while the JLA were away.

So Tim went back to working solo in Gotham as Robin, trusting the Titans to keep up with whatever was happening in Blüdhaven and hoping that Batman would return from his personal mission before the JLA came back down to Earth.

All too soon for Robin, however, the JLA returned and Batman was still absent.

This time at least, Robin had managed to divert most suspicion by using a modified Bat-Suit that Alfred had created for him while the JLA was away. Able to be put on or off in moments, he had worn the suit over his Robin costume to make a few random appearances throughout each night to keep the criminals on their toes, but he was still able to work almost all cases by himself as normal.

He didn't think he'd ever been more grateful for velcro's invention in his life.

Life had gone on like this night after night as he tried to keep Gotham as safe as he could. The entire experience was very rough on his body and mind, seeing as it required a lot more split-second timing and faster reflexes than he normally used, but he had somehow managed to pull it off – he still was not quite sure how he did it, though. Nevertheless, no one had suspected that Batman was not even in Gotham – as far as he knew, anyway – and that was all that mattered.

Well, no one knew for the most part. Oracle had sworn not to mention that 'little' incident with the Vicelords to Batman on pain of death, or at least not without his express prior permission – and that was permission that if he never gave, it would be too soon.

However, the stress of trying to be both Bat and Bird at once was definitely starting to get to him. Dana was already beginning to wonder why his teachers were complaining that he was frequently falling asleep in class. There was only so many ways that he could dodge the issue with her before he had to give her some definite excuses. Whatever excuse he used, she had indicated to him in no uncertain terms that it had better be a matter of life or death that was keeping him awake each night. He had the two weeks until she came back from the holiday with Jack Drake to come up with an acceptable reason – and telling them the truth was nowhere near the right ballpark. At the time, he hadn't been worried. Two weeks was plenty of time to think up a good lie, right?

And then the Bat-signal had lit the sky almost twenty-four hours ago and shot all his fine plans to pieces.

When you came down to it, it was a wonder that he had lasted as long as he had before he collapsed on Oracle's couch. Yet as much as he needed – craved – the dark embraces of sleep, the images of the last twenty-four hours were still too fresh to give him the peace he so badly wanted.

Maybe if he had some answers, he could get the images to leave him alone long enough to really sleep, not just the little fifteen minute doze he had managed at Oracle's place before his dreams woke him.

Oh yes, he had questions.

Analysis of the samples he'd taken from Di— the body in the morgue – showed that he had been dead for about one week, if not two, before his body was found. Yet the hand had been removed three months prior to that at the very latest. So why was the body found before the hand was dropped off? Normally, killers sent things like severed hands to torment the families of the victim before they actually killed the victim. Why, then, did the severed hand arrive after the fact?

Hell, why hadn't they been notified the moment that Blüdhaven Police identified the body as that of one Richard Grayson? Surely Oracle had flags in their computers for anything relating to Dick. Not even the Blüdhaven cops were so incompetent that they'd fail to let families know the fate of lost loved ones once their bodies were identified. Surely they knew that such a failure was a major career-ending move, even in a city as corrupt as the Haven.

Why did the killer(s) leave the body in a ditch for anyone to find? Normally, killers went to great pains to hide the bodies of their victims. After all, it could be hard to convince a jury a murder happened without the body – and the obligatory autopsy photographs – to show for it. So why on earth leave it in an open-air ditch where it was bound to be quickly found?

For that matter, he knew it wasn't just his sense of hero-worship that told him his older brother was a hard man to capture, let alone kill. Dick would have never of survived his first few days in Blüdhaven if he had been a man easy to take down, let alone all the long, hard months that had followed. So how on earth did they capture him? And what they do to him to kill him?

Why did they, whoever they were, take Dick and not someone else? There were plenty of other cops in the Haven, let alone in Gotham and the rest of world. Why would they focus on the Haven, and Dick in particular? Was it something Dick had unknowingly done that lead his eventual killers to him...be it as Nightwing or as Dick Grayson?

And while he was at it, where did Dick hide during the time between his disappearance from their lives and his capture by the people that killed him? Wasn't like there was that many places open to him, especially if he wanted to avoid the legendary Bat-radar...or Alfred's for that matter— Hang on...

If Dick was abducted after his disappearance from their lives but before he returned to them, wouldn't all the things he left behind still be at his hidden lair...the same lair he'd only found with Alfred's help? There should be things like his sets of uniform, his cycle, the muscle car, and whatever else he had that was far too bulky to store in his apartment...

The apartment, he knew, was exactly as Dick left it. That is to say, all of his Nightwing costumes – including the costume he had worn to the fight with The Joker, even if it was now clean, fully repaired, and hanging up in his closest – and his police uniforms were still there, as well as almost everything he'd owned as Dick...

Except for the sets he kept at his Lair and at the Cave for dire emergencies. The Cave was out, though, because there was no way he was going back to the Cave until he could confirm that he wouldn't have to tell Bruce about Dick. So that left the Lair.

_'Yes!'_ he thought to himself as his excitement began to grow, _'That's it! I can answer at least some of my questions by seeing what's missing and whether anything is out of place... And I really only need to check the Lair to find out!'_

At least by taking a look at the Lair, they might be able to eliminate it from their enquires. He dared not bring himself to hope that they might also find a new lead, but nor could he forget that that was still quite likely, even after six months had elapsed. Often, he had found that it was the little details in a crime scene that helped solve a crime. And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that there was probably a myriad of small details at the Lair that would help him solve this emotion-charged puzzle.

However, if he had known exactly what would greet him at Nightwing's Lair, if he had known exactly what the answers to his questions would do to his soul, he would have turned around the Redbird then and there, returned home, and promptly thrown every Robin costume he possessed into the incinerator. Even living the rest of his life as plain Tim Drake was probably going to be much more preferable compared to living through what was to come.

Yet he did not know, and so he continued on his chosen course regardless.

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Joey Flaherty sighed and slumped his head on the folded arms resting on the table in front of him. With his family away for a few days, he had taken advantage of the opportunity to work on the Grayson case from his home-office without interruptions. He did not need to travel into his office in order to do what he needed to do. Most of the calls could be done from the second line he had grudgingly put in six months ago – and now wished he had put in earlier – and the emails to the remaining contacts were easily made from his personal secondhand computer through a few (hopefully) untraceable email accounts.

But it was all to no avail.

He was no closer to solving this case than he had been this morning before Robin called in.

None of his contacts had turned up anything on the last moments of a certain Richard 'Dick' Grayson. It was not surprising considering the length of time since the rookie's disappearance. All he really had to go on was the fact that the rookie had left his apartment on Parkthorn Avenue and had taken a two month leave of absence from the Force, returning to work for just under one week before his actual disappearance four months ago... There was, of course, that time Joey could still swear he saw the rookie walking along Parkthorn Avenue looking very much the worse for wear...but the man hadn't turned around when Joey had called out his name.

It was probably just a case of mistaken identity, anyway.

The problem was that his gut told him that he need not worry about the almost four months between Grayson's disappearance from the Force and the discovery of his body. He did not know why, but his instincts told him that whatever had caused his disappearance had kept him for the entire three and a half months it had taken to kill the officer. Instead, it was those first two months that he kept digging at like a dog gnawing on a bone. He might not have any evidence, but he was still pretty sure that that two month leave of absence from the B.P.D. had everything to do with Grayson's later disappearance.

But why did he leave? Where did he go? And what on earth could one man have done in those two months that would make him so hard to track down? It was like the rookie officer had literally dropped off the face of the earth! Why, not even—

He froze and repeated that last phrase to himself again. Why did it strike a chord within him? What was it about it that seemed so familiar...so important?

_'Think, Flaherty, THINK! "...literally dropped of the face of the Earth..." What does that imply?'_

_'It means being underground,'_ he answered himself slowly, _'of hiding in a covert manner, or maybe not even existing on the surface of the Earth itself...'_ He sat bolt upright and suddenly cursed as he realized what it meant.

_'An alias! The little runt must've used an alias!'_

That was why he couldn't find the rookie! 'Dick Grayson' literally hadn't existed for that two month leave of absence! At least, he had not existed in the sense that he hadn't bought anything, sold anything, moved something out of his apartment, spoken to anyone, or even breathed in any air. The rookie had abandoned everything tied into the "Richard Grayson" identity and created another...another name, another identity entirely under which to live...

Then again, why would he use an alias in the first place? What on earth had made him so desperate that he found it necessary to abandon his identity and create another? What had he done that made him want to disappear without a trace? What was he hiding from?

For that matter, who was he hiding from?

Didn't that kid Robin say that Grayson had connections to Nightwing? So maybe....

Nah, it couldn't have been Nightwing. It just wasn't the vigilante's style to do that kind of thing. Besides, if his memory served him right, Nightwing had disappeared about the same time after that fiasco with The Joker... So maybe Grayson have gained some kind of knowledge that could have prevented the whole thing, and was hiding because he could not get it to the vigilante in time and feared Nightwing's wrath?

Even as he formed the words, Joey knew the thought was wrong. Again, Nightwing was not the type to blast a contact for not delivering the truth. His own dealings with the vigilante had been a case in point. Such actions were more like the Bat, anyway...and wasn't the Bat rumored to be Nightwing's father?

Something like that.

So maybe Grayson had actually been hiding from Batman. Maybe he could have prevented the whole Joker thing, but didn't. Therefore, fearing that the Bat was going to come gunning for his hide, he hid himself so deep that now no one could find where he had been.

Now it was making a bit more sense.

Okay, so now he knew why Grayson was hiding...so where would he hide?

And while he was on that subject, why hadn't Grayson returned to his apartment after the two months were up? According to his super, Dick had just upped and left one morning before she got up, without even explaining why. She did say he had seemed worn and exhausted both physically and mentally the night before when they'd briefly talked, but he hadn't given her an explanation at all....and the next morning he was gone. Two months later, his leave from the B.P.D. was up and he dutifully returned to work as Richard Grayson...but not to the apartment under that name. Why the B.P.D. and not his own apartment?

However, now that he consciously thought about it, that question was fairly easy to answer. A highly powerful virus had wiped out all of Blüdhaven's computers the week before Grayson's leave was up. In the few days between his return to work and subsequent disappearance, there had not been hardly enough time to catalogue the damage to the digital files, let alone recreate the system and start entering new data as it came in. That was probably how his disappearance was not logged for so long... Come to think of it, the computers still weren't fully up, not with the recent power surges that were playing havoc with all kinds of electronic equipment.

So in the few days between the end of his leave and the actual disappearance, Grayson had returned to the B.P.D. but not to his apartment because the Blüdhaven Police Department were far too busy to record his return on the computer...while the super of his apartment building would surely notice his return and mention it to someone...

So, not only was he hiding from the Bat...but also from someone with the ability to hack into computer systems, and even had the guts to penetrate a system belonging to the police – a gutsy move even if the Blüdhaven system had the security . Who could possibly—? _'No need to finish that one,'_ he answered himself. _'Only one person would be brave enough.' _

'Oracle.'

So Dick Grayson had been hiding from Batman...and Oracle, the greatest hacker the world had ever known...who'd also managed to get on Blockbuster's – and thus, as much as he hated to admit it, the Blüdhaven's PD – bad side.

Now everything was starting to make sense. Perhaps what he really should do is go down to the Blüdhaven library and see what he could dig up about Dick Grayson's past. Maybe finding out more information about the kid's past than his official file showed would help him figure out where the kid would hide, and maybe even some indication of how he got involved in the vigilante world...or, failing that, he could try his luck in an internet cafe and see how much he could find before another surge hit...

He nodded to himself in satisfaction and pushed himself away from his desk. That was what he was going to do. He would go to the nearest Internet cafe and try his hand at searching the net for Grayson's past...then, if that failed, he would go to the library and see what he could dig up there on the connection from the Bat and Nightwing to Gray—

_KNOCK KNOCK_

Joey frowned as he stood up and made his way to the front door. _'Now who could that be?'_ It wasn't his family. They weren't due back for another day at the very least, and Mrs Flaherty would not bother to knock either. He was not even expecting anyone....

....And he certainly was not expecting to see Sergeant Rohrbach through the peephole in the front door.

He pulled open the door and gave a friendly smile. "Amy?! What are you doing here? I thought you were—"

"Can I come in?" the female officer interrupted gravely, not returning his smile.

Joey hesitated for a second, his smile dying a quick death as he felt a sudden twisting in his gut that told him that something was wrong. Very wrong. Police only ask to come in when they want to search the place...or they had bad news... "This isn't a social call, is it?" he asked, his voice quiet.

Amy sighed softly and shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Joey. Can I come in?"

"Sure..." he replied automatically, not really thinking about his words as he stood off to the side to give her enough room to enter. His mind was whirling, trying to think if he had heard anything lately about Arnot threatening him again...or what bad news she could possibly...

The churning in his gut intensified as he turned around to face one of his few friends. "It's about one of the kids, isn't it?" he asked bluntly, his voice twisted in anguish. "Or my wife..."

Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. His worst nightmare was coming to life.

"Which one?" he pressed, grabbing the officer by her shoulders and barely stopping himself from physically shaking her. "Which one have I lost?"

Amy met his pained gaze with her own troubled eyes and replied softly: "I'm so sorry, Joey. It's...it's Lisa."

A roaring filled his ears as he let go of the Sergeant and stumbled back into the front door. He stared straight ahead and numbly slid to the floor as his knees refused to support him, not hearing the rest of Amy's words even though he could see her lips moving.

There was no need to hear what he already knew.

His youngest was gone. His baby was lost to him forever.

Then he had a thought that sent a chill running throughout his entire body. Lisa had been in the same car as the rest of his family.

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The Batcave was dark, silent, and mysterious, holding within its shadowed grasp more dark secrets than it normally did when the Batmobile pulled into its designated parking space at ten minutes to six on the evening of this auspicious day. The enlarged 'souvenirs' were shrouded in darkness, haunting reminders of lonely days and darker nights even without being illuminated. Even the glass cases for the uniforms of the Fallen were unlit, silent witnesses to the unusually deserted subterranean dwelling.

The atmosphere was so hushed and stagnant that the soft purr of the engine, just a few decibels above the lowest threshold of the human ear when it was idling, still seemed to shatter the quiet into a million pieces. When the key was turned and the engine died away, the silence returned as the noiseless environment quickly regathered itself into a stronger, more omnipotent and powerful presence, quickly thickening the very air till it clogged in the lungs and dragged at the heart.

It was so quiet.

There was no Robin waiting on the Cray with the latest reports of what he had been doing during Batman's absence, nor was Oracle's insignia on the screens to show that she was connected to the Cave to act as Robin's stand-in because he was out on some case. In fact, the Cray was as silent and still as the rest of the Cave. There was not even the smallest flapping of leathery wings from the nocturnal bats inhabiting the ceiling to break the oppression. Yet in all this, perhaps the most telling sign of all was that Alfred was not waiting with a warm robe for each of them and a tray of mugs, one of hot chocolate for Cassandra and the other with coffee for Bruce.

The Cave was instead silent, deserted, lonely and lost. It was deathly still, without a flicker of movement to take away the menace of the creeping darkness that constantly lived within the Cave.

To coin a phrase, it was as hauntingly quiet and still as a morgue – and a morgue probably had more in the way of companionship.

All this Batman saw and processed in the split second it took him to glance around the Cave as he emerged from his vehicle. One eyebrow shifted up a few millimeters, the only visible sign of his considerable surprise. _'What on earth happened? Where is everyone?'_

"Stay here. Don't touch anything." This he directed to Cassandra, who had been sitting in the secondary seat in the Batmobile. She too was looking around the Cave in confusion, obviously expecting a warm welcome – especially considering that their undercover mission had lasted quite a few months – that was not in evidence. He did not bother glancing back as he strode away to see her respond with a very small incline of her head before she drifted over to the dressing rooms to change out of her outfit.

Batman didn't even take time to change out of the dirty and ripped jeans, the dirtier t-shirt and even more battered jacket that were far more reminiscent of Matches Malone – an expression of the Bat for the street – than it ever was remotely fitting for a multi-billionair like Bruce Wayne. His need to know what was going on was far too strong for him to adhere to Alfred's cardinal rule to leave Batman's business in the Cave...and to at least look like Bruce Wayne when he was in the Manor itself.

Something was wrong, and he intended to find out what it was.

He climbed the stairs two or three at a time, his mind quickly supplying all the things that could possibly have prevented Alfred from greeting his safe return from another successful mission. However, none of the possibilities he came up with – ranging from ideas as simple as helping Leslie treat an injured Robin to as macabre as an assassination – could compare to what he found in reality.

Alone and apparently in good health, Alfred silently sat in the lounge-room and stared up at the framed portrait of the late Thomas and Martha Wayne. Silver tracks lined his cheeks, and his face seemed far more wrinkled than it had been when he left all those months ago. For all the life he showed, Alfred might as well have been carved from stone – so much so that a part of Bruce was surprised that the kindly old man was not covered in cobwebs.

He paused in the doorway, hesitant to disturb the man that had served as his long-time friend, confident, guide, and father. He was also slightly surprised to find himself reluctant to discover what it was that had disturbed Alfred so when he had been as stable and safe as a mountain for as long as he could remember.

There was, however, no need for Bruce to make a noise to reveal his presence. With obvious effort, Alfred's seemed to gather himself together from wherever his heart and mind had fled to when his natural sixth sense of his employer's whereabouts sounded the alarm. The elderly man's face smoothed out and assumed his normal neutral expression with an apparent ease, although he had to draw on an internal strength of will and character to accomplish the simple act of standing up. He turned around to face Bruce with a small smile, trying to look as though there was nothing wrong...but the smile never quite reached his eyes. "Ah, Master Bruce. Forgive me for not greeting you upon your return. I'm afraid I must have lost track of the time while I awaited your return."

That did it. Something was terribly wrong with the world. "Don't worry, old friend. It's just the first time you've done that in over thirty years," he replied quietly, his forehead crinkling slightly in a puzzled frown. "What's wrong?"

Alfred said nothing, only breathing deeply as he slipped past Bruce and headed towards the Kitchen – probably to prepare a light meal, Bruce thought.

Bruce followed a few steps behind him, his confusion and need to know mounting with every second. "Alfred, please, tell me what happened while I was gone," he appealed quietly. "Please, tell me what's upset you so. Is it Robin? He's not injured is he?"

Strangely, Alfred completely ignored the kitchen – in fact he gave it a wide berth – and went instead to the stairs, informing him quietly as he climbed, "Master Drake is bearing up as well as can be expected, Master Bruce. At least he was when I saw him earlier today." A beat. "Especially considering the circumstances," Alfred muttered, _sotto_ voice.

What? Did he hear that right? Bruce was more confused than ever as he followed the butler up the stairs. "What circumstances? Where is he?"

"Robin is in Blüdhaven," Alfred sighed as he entered the first-floor main hallway, "investigating a lead with Arsenal and The Flash."

Surely he didn't just imagine that sigh. "So what are the Titans doing in Blüdhaven?" Bruce asked, frowning instantly at the thought of meta's anywhere near Gotham as he paused beside Alfred outside a door. He did not, at first, realize at which door they had stopped when he suddenly added, "And what lead are they following?"

Alfred opened the door instead of replying. Bruce entered automatically, expecting Alfred to be right behind him...only to stop short just inside when the realisation of where he was froze the blood in his veins and halted him in his tracks.

Dick's room.

It would always be the room of his eldest (dearest) partner (son), even though he had never slept in it for well over a year, if not many more, before his disappearance.

Bruce slowly turned to face his long-time companion, his face pale and drawn. "Alfred?" he questioned hoarsely, his baritone a wan shadow of its normal self. He had not faced the empty, lonely room since the day Dick left after 'killing' the Joker...the day he'd resolutely pulled the door shut, determined never to open it until.... "Why did you...?"

Even as the questions left his mouth, he knew.

He knew.

And it was the worst thing he had ever known.

"He's dead, isn't he?" he asked, his voice broken and strangled by the hated dark certainty that was spreading like a cancerous growth within his heart. He quickly turned back to the room, his eyes darting wildly about, hungrily taking everything in like a man dying of thirst will try to inhale a bucket of water. "I've lost him..." he whispered softly, heartbroken, grabbing onto the walls as his knees trembled and threatened to drop him to the floor.

He backed up until he was out of the room and then continued until he was leaning against the opposite wall in the hallway. "I've lost him..." he repeated numbly, his blue eyes haunted and filling his unfathomable depths with pain as they locked onto the opening into the room that would now be forever empty.

Alfred placed a hand on Bruce's shoulder and squeezed as hard as he dared with a strength born of his own grief and desolation – which, under the circumstances, was more than enough to break bones had he held on for anything longer than the second he did. It was also enough to shake Bruce – for the moment, at least – out of the stupor he had fallen into. "It's not definite...yet, but it does not seem possible anymore that he is still alive," the elderly butler informed him quietly, his voice touched by his own deep sense of loss.

The pained blue eyes darted to the elderly man and stared with the same intensity as they had stared at a bed that would never be slept in again...and with the same intensity as the eyes of the boy who'd stared at the fallen bodies of his parents after the shooting in Crime Alley. In all of them, questions filled them to the brim and overflowed. "Why? What happened?" he pleaded, his voice broken and desperate with the need to know, to understand, to somehow accept what he never wanted to face. "Why why why?"

And so Alfred told him. For better or worse, he told him everything.

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_At that moment in a certain seedy side of Blüdhaven Port..._

The dealership had been long abandoned by some sort of company that had folded many years ago. For many years it had been standing quietly, empty, a forgotten reminder of better times, of profit in legal commerce and security for the average person. For many years, the only users of the entire building had been the generations of spiders who built their webs in the dark corners, the termites who never quite seemed to be able to destroy it, and the various vermin – walking on two and four legs – that came with life on the humid docks.

And then one night, not all that long ago in the stream of time – although it was almost certainly over eighteen months ago – the abandoned dealership had been reclaimed by a mysterious subsidiary company with deep pockets and a maze of owning companies. Within days, the spiders and termites were long gone, and the rats were leaving in droves. Within weeks, the squatters were too afraid of its new occupant to return.

If one had the time, inclination, and a couple of Crays available – and about three months to wait for the results – the maze of ownerships could eventually be traced back to one single, solitary man:

Dick Grayson.

It was he who had purchased this building for purposes even more hidden than his role in the whole affair...or rather, it was he who secretly acquired it for Nightwing's lair.

Robin – Tim was already wearing his costume in preparation for the night's activities – did not tell his two casually dressed companions that the only reason that they knew of the Lair's location at all was because he and Alfred had stumbled across it when they were trying to find an injured Nightwing after his disastrous first encounter with Bane over the Cabal affair. Since then, Batman and Oracle had also come to know it's location...but only after they had cleared making the revelations with Dick himself.

Roy and Wally advanced ahead of the young superhero into the remodeled dealership. Robin waited in the doorway, listening to their cries of exclamation as he hit the hidden switch to power the lights.

In one corner of the lair was a locker, workbench complete with sink, a cot, and several bottles of water. In the center of the room – in fact hanging from the roof – were the several chasse bodies Dick used to camouflage his car when necessary. There was everything from a Ford Mustang to a taxi cab, from beat-up bombs to the latest model sports convertible. Ironically enough, there was even a shell for a police cruiser. However, there was no sign of the Nightbird muscle car itself, or of Dick himself.

Roy whistled appreciatively as he looked at all gear from where he stood near the door. "Sure is one nice setup he's got here."

Wally nodded as he drifted towards the end with the cot. "Sure is." He peered around the concertina dividers that served as walls of a changing area. "Looks like its been cleared of uniforms, tho'."

"Which ones?" Roy asked. "Police, or 'Wingster?"

"Both," came the surprised reply. Wally's head re-emerged from the changing area, shaking in reluctant admiration for the detailed thoroughness of his leader. "Damn! Even the little things like toothbrushes and toothpaste are gone."

The two Titans continued moving around the lair, investigating what was there and was not. Behind them, still in the doorway, Robin quietly spoke to Oracle through the microphone in his collar. "Oracle? Where did you say his Nightbird was?"

The sound of tapping keys came through the speaker in Robin's ear. "Looks like the Lair. It's in the right vicinity, anyway."

"It's not here."

"Hang on. I'll check it against the locators you're wearing." More tapping of keys. "Strange; it says here that Roy's standing virtually on top of it."

"Acknowledged." Robin refocused on Roy and found him standing underneath the alternate bodies for Nightwing's muscle car in awed appreciation. "Hey, Roy!"

The Titan looked up, a guilty look flashing over his face for a moment at being caught muttering to himself about the benefits and drawbacks of each design. "Yeah?"

"You wouldn't happen to be standing on Dick's car, would you?"

Roy shot him an insulted look. "I'm not that stupid, kid. Do I look like I'm standing on it?"

Robin shrugged. "That's where Oracle says it is."

He crossed his arms belligerently and tried not to tap his foot in irritation. "Using what?"

"The standard GPS signal malfunctioned a few days before he fought the Joker," Robin explained patiently. "He never had time to replace it, so we were going by one of the locators the Bat placed on the car."

Roy snorted in disgust. "Trust the Bat to bug his own kid."

"He's just a man that hates to be caught unprepared . . . especially in situations like this," Robin pointed out, using what he thought was a fairly reasonable tone under the circumstances.

Only slightly mollified, Roy still looked ready to argue the point of where the car was – as well as his opinion of the Bat's idea of being prepared.

Realizing that this could easily escalate into a full-blown argument, Wally quickly tried to defuse the situation. "Chill out, Roy. For all we know, Robbie might've installed a below ground garage for the car. Can you see anything like that?"

Roy grunted in reply, admitting without words that Wally did indeed have a point. He stepped back to bring more into his field of vision. "Not really. I—" He froze when he heard something crunch under his foot, and bent down to pick the object up.

"Wait a sec, guys," Robin broke in, one hand pressed to his earpiece. "Oracle says that the locator suddenly went off-line."

He straightened up and held it up to the light, his face pale. "Would you mean this locator by any chance?"

Robin muttered a word he was not supposed to know then spoke again into the speaker on his collar. "Looks like another dead-end, Oracle. He must've removed the Bat's locator before he took off."

"Figured. I knew he didn't want the Bat to find him, but I had hoped he wouldn't go as far as that." The sound of a frustrated fist hitting the table and a muttered curse of her own. "Problem is that now we can't find him." She sighed heavily, rubbed her temples, and ordered, "Look, just take a look around while you're there. See if you can find any clues."

"Sure thing. I— Hang on..."

Robin never got the chance to finish before Wally cried out in surprise. He whirled, a hand drifting to his folded bo but then relaxing when he saw what had caused the cry. Wally stood by the workbench, on which was a brand-new TV that Robin had never noticed before. _'When did that get there?'_

"Look what I found!" Wally cried out, holding up a black rectangular box. An innocent-looking videotape, on which was a Post-It Note.

"What's the note say, Wal'?" Roy asked, walking over to investigate himself.

He frowned in confusion. "It just says it's for Batman."

Robin appeared by Wally's side and examined the scrawled message on the Post-It Note. "That's not Dick's handwriting. His writing is more rounded and taller than this."

Roy shrugged and rolled his eyes, bouncing up-and-down on the heels of his feet impatiently. "So? Stress can change people's handwriting, you know. Just play the stupid tape already!"

"Uh, Roy," Wally began, looking askance at his fellow Titan, "this is a tape for **Batman**. You really think he'll be happy if we watch it?"

Roy looked slightly uneasy for a moment until his heart took control again. "We gotta look it at, guys. If we wait for the Bat's permission, we'll never see it. You know what he's like. What the control-freak don't know ain't gonna hurt him." His eyes pleaded with his companions to understand. "What if its some final message from Dick? What if he explains why he's been gone so long, or what he plans for the future? We gotta at least take a quick look at it."

Wally nodded, quickly seeing his point. Before he could do anything, however, Robin took the tape from him and went over to the new TV on the workbench and inserted it in the VCR.

"HEY!"

Robin shook his head. "Better let me put it on, guys. Batman might give me a little more leeway than he will you." He inserted it in the tape player and turned around, gracing them with a small but bitter smile. "Besides, can I help it if you refused to leave?"

Roy and Wally shared a knowing look. The kid-bat was starting to be more like his older brother every day.

Without waiting for a reply, Robin pressed 'Play' and stepped back to let the others see as well, hoping what was going to play would be as Roy had said it would be. The film that began playing on the TV, however, was anything but a comforting message from their friend and brother. It was a message about Dick, but not from their close friend and companion, rather an explanation and a warning to them all. But they did not know this at first, for there was nothing to see.

The screen was dark.

Pitch black, where there really was nothing beyond the end of one's nose.

Darkness, the kind that could be cut with a meat-knife.

The kind of darkness that only lurks in the darkest back streets of Gotham on a moonless night when the Bats are away.

Then one single light, in the middle of the room, activated after a few seconds to reveal a sight that would inhabit their nightmares for years to come...

_Dick Grayson....quiet, unmoving, covered with his own blood._

_He worked hard for each breath, chest heaving as he struggled to get air into lungs congested with either mucus or blood or both. His longish locks of black hair were tousled and messy, matted with a mix of blood and sweat, and at the annoying length that would always be falling in his eyes if he stood. He wore the remains of a police uniform, although the shirt was long gone, the small dirty white strips on the floor around him its only reminder. The black trousers were torn, tattered, doing little to hide the scars and bruises that marked his body._

_Painful, deep purple bruises marked his handsome features, swelling his face until his eyes almost disappeared...although that had not stopped his captors from taping them shut with silver duct tape. Raised reddened welts lined his chest, forming a criss-cross pattern that spoke ominously of a whip, some of them still slowly oozing blood. Ugly brown and purple discolorations over his rib-cage indicated that they had been using him as punching bag and did not mind rebreaking his ribs with almost every session. Bone poked through the skin near his right elbow from compound fractures in his arm, and his left leg was also twisted at un-natural angles. Mixed in among these were deep, blistering burns from where they had been amusing themselves with hot brands, trying to see what made him scream._

_Although he was lying on something resembling a chair for a patient of some dentist, this midnight-blue chair had been extensively modified. After all, it wasn't your average dentist chair that came with heavy metal bands encircling the ankles, waist, wrists, and upper arms. His skin was rubbed almost raw in the places where the heavy metal bands encircled his body and held him to the chair that was stained with his own blood._

_He was also missing his left hand. Crudely bandaged with the remnants of what had once been Dick's shirt, the stump of his arm still oozed blood slowly._

_The only good thing about the entire scene – if there ever was one – was that Dick was thankfully unconscious . . . or almost so. Every once in a while, he would jerk slightly against his bonds, mumbling cries of protest against whatever dreams plagued his sleep. He was whimpering in his restless sleep, begging, pleading with his torturers to stop._

_Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing, who had saved the world numerous times, faced villains twice his size with three times his strength, crossed the galaxies and earths of the multiverse, who had been through hell-on-earth over the years, had faced down the Joker and conquered Two Face, had broken through Brother Blood's brainwashing with his own strength of will, had the courage to be his own person outside the Bat, and more . . . . here he lay, battered, bruised, shaking in fear even in the refuge of unconsciousness._

_His torturers were obviously succeeding where decades of villains and criminals, heartbreak and corruption, had failed miserably: he was perilously close to breaking._

_And then a deep baritone of a voice wafted out from the shadows, more electronic than human in nature, to say only one thing: "Positions."_

_Even semi-conscious, Dick flinched and seemed to try and draw away from the hated phrase. His mumbling slowly quieted as his body began to tense and his mind struggled to wake._

_The shadows around him slowly parted to show twin giants gathering around the chair. Each one was as wide as he was tall, seeming nothing more than rippling muscles as they moved. They gathered around the battered man on the chair and awaited an order, stony faces not flickering with regret for what they've done, hatred for the vigilante, or even sadistic pleasure over what they'd inflicted . . . in short, they might as well have been carved from the same rock as the Bat for all the emotion they showed._

_Behind them, from the depths of the shadows emerged what seemed to be their leader. The one Dick had come to know by many names – many of them definitely not for polite company – seemed just as large as the others, but wearing a mechanical suit that covered his entire body including his face, although his shoulder-length black hair was allowed to fall freely down his back. It was all made of the same metal, in the light seeming a strangely coloured goldish shade with hints of red depending on how the wearer stood. And yet even though he had stepped fully into the circle of light, he somehow seemed to remain in the shadows that caressed him like a second skin, as much a part of him as his strange suit. His voice emerged from behind the mask, distorted by the speaker that allowed him to be heard with a metallic timbre. "Eyes."_

_It was the same voice as had ordered the session to begin, and was apparently the catalyst to get the two giants to act. Standing one on each side of the vigilante, they reached out in unison and ripped the tape from Grayson's eyes with a flourish._

_The eyes darted around frantically behind lids that remained tightly shut, as if the young prisoner was trying to wake but couldn't, as if something was holding him back from full awareness._

_At a nod from the man in the shadows, a syringe suddenly appeared as if from out of nowhere in the hands of one of the giants and was quickly injected into Grayson's veins a stimulant intermixed with a temporary antidote for the drugs they were feeding him. His eyes snapped open as the liquid burned in his veins, but after that the tearing pain was lost on him as his body started telling him how it felt to be incinerated in a furnace of pain._

_His blue-eyed gaze flat, lifeless, never quite focusing properly, he regarded his tormentors with an apathetic silence as they laid out their instruments. His gaze slowly skewed over to the man in the shadows. "Please," he begged, his voice emerging dry and rusty from a throat long since parched, "no mm–mmore, p–please..."_

_The Phoenix remained unmoving except for a slight shake of his head. "You know how to stop it, Grayson. Tell me what I want to hear, and it will all be over."_

_There was a long moment of hesitation before Dick slowly squared his jaw and shook his head weakly, forcing his eyes into a squint as the room slowly spun around him. "Nnoo . . . I'll never . . . . ever . . . tell . . . . . "_

_"As you wish." The leader seemed to shrug heartlessly. "Begin!"_

_The twins each picked up a small handheld device with knob controls and what appeared to be like twin antennae emerging from one end of the device. They held down a button, and the room immediately echoed with the distinctive sound of arcing electricity as lightning leaped between the metallic ends._

_Dick's eyes snapped open at the dreaded sound, his gaze locking onto the devices as he instinctively tried to push himself into the chair, out of reach of the long, limber antennae. He wanted desperately to close his eyes again, to not have to see what they were doing, but the stimulant burning bright in his veins forbid him from even that small reprieve. And then the tips of the twin tasers touched him—_

The scenes that followed caused most of those watching to avert their eyes and desperately try to block out the sound from the speakers.

Tears glistened on Wally's cheeks as he stood stock-still, his head turned aside, the screams echoing in his ears until he thought he would burst. Roy quickly turned towards the sink by the video and vomited, his stomach emptying itself until there was nothing left and still he continued to heave.

Robin said nothing, and did nothing. He seemed to ignore his companions completely. His natural instinct was to turn away and do what Roy was doing. But his training made him stay. His training made him watch. His training made him remember.

—Apparently tiring of this game, the suited leader signaled a stop.

In spite of the chill of the cavernous room – or at least it seemed that way from the echoes – sweat poured down the young prisoner's forehead, stinging his eyes and mixing with the tears of pain that flowed down his pale cheeks. It also glistened on his entire body, working its way into his numerous lacerations and burns, creating a constant nagging source of discomfort. By contrast, his mouth and throat felt like large grade sandpaper, his breath rasping painfully as he tried to force air past the surfaces made raw from his repeated cries of pain and rage.

"You must be unnaturally strong for a mortal, Grayson. But then, why else would you be Nightwing?" the suited man asked rhetorically as he moved forward slightly, the darkness still coalescing around him despite the bright light almost directly above his head. In one swift movement, he grabbed the fallen vigilante's chin and jerked Dick's head toward him, forcing the trembling young man to look him squarely in the face. "But you still haven't given me what I want. Give me the simple answers that I want and we'll let you go."

His hesitation was even longer than it was at first, lasting over five seconds before his eyes focused dully (apathetically) on the mask of his hated foe.

"G–G–Go–o t–t–t–to h–h–ee–e–ell..." he stuttered after a moment, ignoring the small spark of alarm at how it taken his retort to emerge.

As he gazed vacantly at his tormentor, blue eyes dulled and dilated by agonising pain still coursing through his abused body, he realized what the other no doubt knew: he was cracking under the strain. He could feel his will to resist wilting, crushed by the painful torture he barely remembered living without. He was holding onto his defiance and to life with his one good hand, but it was clear to him that his hold was shaky at best.

His stubbornness was all he had left to keep him going, to keep himself resisting, and even that was quickly wilting under the pressure of this treatment. His stamina had fled somewhere far away after only the first month here . . . or was it the second? Even his hope of rescue had deserted him by now, and he had resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die in the darkness. But how much longer could he keep his silence when all he had was his reluctance to let everything go?

The Black Phoenix made a disgusted snort and dropped the man's chin as he stepped back into the shadows, leaving Dick coughing painfully as a lump of air rushed into his lungs. He grimaced and tried to curl into a ball as the sharp motions of his chest pulled at his broken ribs but was once more stopped by the metal bands holding him down.

With the insight that comes after living through more sessions like these than he cared to remember, he suddenly seemed to sense that the twins were again approaching him with their tasers. His trembling increased as his imagination supplied the sensations that would soon assault him anew. He again tried to press himself back into the chair in a futile effort to escape what was coming, unconsciously whimpering as he pleaded, "Please . . . stop . . . . no . . . no m–more . . . please . . . . please . . . . . n–n–no—"

And then he screamed again...

...and again...

...and again...

...again and again...

...until he could scream no more, and still the burning, tingling, stinging pain assaulted him...

...when all he could do was jerk uselessly in a chair forbidding all movement in the throes of muscle spasms strong enough to break his body in two that wracked his body over and over without respite...

...and all he could focus on was the beating of his heart in his ears as it faltered, faltered and stumbled in its beats at the unrelenting burning that tore at his nerves and ripped at his mind and soul... like a..... with...claws.... cat's claws....... cats.......... ca............

—and then they stopped.

The blessed quiet descended once more, broken only by Dick's gasping breaths as he desperately sucked air into useless lungs. He collapsed in a boneless heap on the chair, finally free of the burning torture of the taser...for the moment. His head hit the headrest with an audible thump and his eyes closed for the first time since the taser had emerged as he struggled to hold back the darkness encroaching on his vision and the weighted muscles that made it so hard to breathe.

"Give it up, Nightwing," the leader encouraged (purred) persuasively, his voice dropping to an almost soothing tone. "Tell me what I want, and we'll leave you alone."

The young prisoner made no reply. He continued lying with his eyes closed, gasping for breath, the broken bones in his remaining hand grinding painfully as he made a weak fist, trying to grasp the life that was even now quickly slipping from his hold.

As if aware that he was losing his captive, the Phoenix nodded subtly at one of the twins. The contents of another vial of stimulants found its way into Grayson's system, but this time it did not have the same effect as before. His eyes only made it open half-way, and the involuntary trembling that never seemed to leave only got worse.

The leader stepped forward again, moving his helmet directly into the captive's line-of-sight. His voice dropped into a fairly close approximation of The Voice. "Tell me the answers, Grayson, or I swear to you that the next person in this chair will be your precious Babs...and this time I'll make sure you'll watch and feel everything we do to her." He paused to let the threat sink in.

Dick stared at the helmet with his vacant gaze, his existence of an untold number of weeks flashing through his mind in all its gruesome details. His thoughts whirled around his head too fast for him to hold and understand, but one thing remained clear.

He no longer cared what they did to him. They could tear him limb from limb if they wanted, he just didn't care anymore. He'd felt too much pain and agony in these last months to worry about a little bit more.

But not Babs. He had to protect her. No matter what, he had to keep her safe . . . no matter what it may cost him in the end. No matter what.

No matter what.

His torturer smirked behind the mask, knowing he had won as soon as he saw in those pained blue eyes the flame of defiance, the intelligence that was Dick Grayson, weakening and drastically faltering. "Now," he fairly purred, "unless you want your precious girlfriend lying where you are now, tell me where Superman's kryptonite bullet is."

He couldn't let his Babs see him like this...just like he couldn't let them do to her what they had done to him. He could not let her feel the same kind of abandonment and hopeless desolation he felt... He could not even stand the thought.... He just couldn't stand it.....

His eyes slowly slid shut as he weakly rested his head on the chair, listlessly accepting the knowledge that Babs had been his breaking point all along. So the answer finally came, almost inaudible in the hoarse remnants of a voice, "Unda . . . . Mmaaannn'rrrrr . . . . . Baat . . . . . caaaavvvvvve . . . "

No sooner were the words out than his body slumped in the chair as his soul collapsed upon itself at his betrayal. He did not bother fighting the darkness that overcame him with sudden surging strength. His final thought was a weak call for forgiveness before he passed out for the last time.

Unaware that he had lost at the same moment that he'd won, the Phoenix pressed on, "And the access codes to the JLA Watchtower?"

No response.

Another application of the taser made Dick's body jerk and buck against the restraints, but it seemed more an involuntary reaction than any real expression of pain. This time he did not scream, nor did he try to twist away. When it was over, his body remained limp, unmoving, ominously still once the taser was removed.

The Black Phoenix frowned. "Check him."

One of the twins reached out and pressed one huge finger to the carotoid artery under the jawbone. He shook his head, and spoke for the first time in a voice as emotionless and flat as his face. "Gone."

A moment of tense silence.

"Revive him...again."

And then the light faded, swiftly bringing back the darkness with only the echoes of that final phrase to remind them of the contents of that tape...as if they could ever forget them. And then even the echo faded, leaving only the silence.

Silence as they tried to absorb what they had seen.

Robin stared at the screen, his thoughts focusing themselves on that final word. He tightened his lips into a white line and a small furrow appeared between his brows. Inside, it was anything but silent and still. His heart cried silent tears, his body aching and shivering as if the taser had been applied to him instead of Dick. The same scream from early this morning was building within him once more, but this time he was determined that he was not going to let it out. _'Gotta channel the anger...'_

Wally clenched his hands into tight fists as he struggled to hold back the anger that burned within his heart. Powerful, righteous hatred burned within him for the people that had maltreated his leader so, shattering his mind and breaking apart his soul. _'When I get my hands on them, I'm gonna...'_

Strangely enough, it was Roy who vocalized what they all felt, the shock and the despair and the hatred that burned within those watching. In his eloquent manner, it only took a muttered curse:

"They broke him, killed him, then did it all over again," he muttered, his voice strangled. "The Bastards," he whispered viciously.

The silence returned, each one agreeing with the sentiment in the privacy of their thoughts, and more often than not adding their own curses and muttered vows to the mix.

And then a voice suddenly spoke up casually from the shadows in the far end of the lair:

"You know, I never did quite figure out the heritage of those twins." A twisted smirk behind the mask as the heroes froze in sickening recognition of its identity. "But aren't you glad I found 'em first?"

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**End of Scene I**

Need I say that this is TBC? :D

Once again, I'm very sorry if I've upset people, but sometimes things just have to be written. And besides, would you believe that this was actually the **much** lighter re-write? The original two versions were a lot more..._intense_. ;-)

_Next scene:_ The stage is set for some serious fighting as the Phoenix starts to reveal some of his cards. More fighters will enter the fray...and one of their own will vanish while another secret is stolen. This is one fighting arena that is about to turn on its head...


	4. RoE: A Price Paid In Blood

_Disclaimers:_ Nothing new here. Go see first chapter for disclaimers and all that.

_Summary:_ The heroes now know who killed Dick Grayson from the video. Unfortunately, that voice from behind isn't going to guide them...it just might kill them instead.

Besides, after the last two chapters, I decided I'd give you all something nice and simple like a fight to calm us all down. Now, I said 'simple,' right? evil grin Just don't expect too much action from me – for good reason too. Its so hard for me to write that I usually don't touch it with an extended bargepole. Emotions and thoughts are much easier. :)

BTW: The sentences in **bold**&_italics_ are sections that are taken from what was already occurred, be it the last chapter or from another character's viewpoint. It's just the same thing, occurring at the same time, but from someone else's POV. I just did that way to help me see what's what, okay? Please don't forget to review tho...especially after the last chapter.

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**ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE**  
**Rules of Engagement**

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_**Chapter 4**_  
_**A Debt Paid In Blood**_

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_It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail._  
Gore Vidal

_Light is the absence of Dark._  
Anon

_A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies._  
Oscar Wilde

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Eleven minutes past six at night.

Just over twenty-four hours since that fateful meeting on top of the G.C.P.D.'s building. Twenty-four hours of raging emotions and silent tears, of sorrowing cries and grieving sobs, of breaking hearts and streams of water flowing down numerous cheeks. A night of extremes, and no more right now than what it was in the secluded "basement" level of the manor of Gotham's elite bachelor.

For most of her life, being still, being silent, had come naturally to Cassandra Cain. Silence was so intrinsically entwined within her personality that she had only spoken for less than three years by her late-teens – and even then she was so spartan in words that she made the Bat look like a chatterbox. Her father had trained her well, and Batman's work with her had heightened her abilities to a degree bordering on meta-human.

Tonight, though, her training was failing her.

Normally, she would welcome the silence of the Batcave like one would an rediscovered a much-loved katana, embracing it tightly and never wanting to let go. She usually valued the moments when there was no need to worry about conversing, when she could hear her own thoughts, when there was no one to interrupt.

Not tonight.

It just seemed...wrong, somehow, that the Cave wasn't filled with laughter and joking, that the sound of the human voice was profoundly lacking, that the hush in the air seemed to merge with the darkness and become a living entity that sucked the life out of everything it enveloped. She found it all unnerving, unnatural and disquieting.

Tonight, she hated the quiet that was spread throughout the Cave.

She had tried dispelling at least of the malevolent silence by making noise whenever she could, but there was, after all, only so much one person could do without going mad. She had even tried running through a few routines that her father had once taught her, routines as familiar and comforting as her image in the mirror. She never made it past the first five moves or so before she had to stop, her skin crawling and the hair on the back of her neck rising. Her danger sense was always telling her that something in the darkness – or maybe it was the darkness itself? – was watching her malevolently...but of course when she looked around, there was no one there.

She was all alone...and she had never been so scared to be alone in the hushed dwelling.

Finally she abandoned the training mats and hurried back towards the Batmobile, telling herself that she had better at least look like she'd obeyed Batman's direction to stay put. She shivered in the sudden cold that overtook her and huddled in a ball by the front tyre of the souped-up hotrod, wishing Batman would return soon. Even the oppressive silence of the Bat was far more welcome than the malicious hush that seemed to have taken over the Cave. At least then she would feel some body heat, even if she would probably never hear his voice.

She hugged her knees closer and looked around uneasily, restless in the still Cave even as she kept a careful watch on the creeping blackness lest it get too close, wishing she knew how to turn on more than the lights for the training areas. She wished she didn't feel like she was being watched all the time, although she was feeling very alone and desperate for company. She wished Alfred would come down, because his gentle smiles and words always seemed to disperse Batman's darkness...and this quiet blackness was surely just a physical expression of the Bat's depression...wasn't it?

Not a moment too soon, she heard voices at the top of the stairs into the Cave. She stood swiftly when she heard them arguing, her unease increasing as she wondered what could have made this tightly-knit "family" so torn apart that they would disagree so. Her eyes widened as she listened to the discussion and unconsciously drifted closer to the stairs. _'What on earth happened while we were gone?'_

"I don't care! I'm going, and that's final!" shouted Batman— no no, that's wrong, it was Bruce speaking – and he was as close to anger as he ever was without slipping into his Dark Knight persona. His footsteps on the Cave stairs were heavy and deliberately loud.

"But Master Bruce, I must insist you contact Oracle," Alfred remonstrated, his gentle accent softening his tone as his voice wafted down the stairs to her as he followed Bruce with effortless grace. "Take the time to know what you're heading into before you rush off into danger."

"Why should I talk to her?" Bruce fired back, his voice dropping closer and closer to a growl as Batman began to surface once more. "Oracle's obviously had more important things to do than talk to me." It seemed strange to Cassandra that Bruce's eyes seemed to radiate hurt and grief as he walked into the Cave, providing an unusual counter-point to his angry, sarcastic words. Stranger still was the fact that she could read him at all – even as the so-called "Playboy Billionaire" when his guard was lowered, Bruce was always hard nut to crack when it came to figuring out exactly what he was feeling.

"I would suggest you reconsider your hasty words, Master Bruce," Alfred replied stiffly, pointedly ignoring the sarcasm and responding only to the words themselves. "You of all people should recall your explicit instructions for us to not attempt to contact you for any reason while you were undercover." The kindly old man stopped by the Cray super-computer and added, "Do not blame the child for following her heart in this matter of grieving, just as you are already following yours."

The softly-spoken words seemed to hit Bruce in the back like a hot knife plunging between his ribs as he stopped dead in his tracks until the echoes died away. Then he continued on to the changing area, apparently with as much determination as before, but Cassandra thought that she had seen a small crack in his defences for a moment there before he had quickly covered it up again.

"You won't change my mind, Alfred. I'm going to Bludhaven, and that's final." Bruce's voice wafted from behind the changing screens, changing abruptly on the last three words to Batman's deep growl.

Cassandra, because she was watching Alfred carefully, caught a glimpse of the despair and grief that had flashed over his face at the vocal change. And then it was gone, replaced by his normal neutral expression...although this time it seemed more set-in-stone than it was usually, as if he feared the results of any crack – however small – in his demeanour.

Was it just her imagination, or did the Living Darkness within the Cave flee from the kindly old man as he stood there by the Batcomputer, only to gather around Gotham's Dark Knight like metal is attracted to a powerful magnet as he emerged in full costume?

There was silence again in the Cave at the stalemate as Batman stalked over to his Car. He passed right by her without acknowledging her presence. Slowly she drifted closer to Alfred as she turned her head back and forth, alternately staring at each of them in wonder at the small changes she could sense between them in their relationship. To her, they were being torn apart by a need to grieve even as they were drawn together by their own needs for comfort and companionship. Right now, she didn't know which need would prove the stronger – and she wasn't sure she really wanted to know the outcome.

"Do you even know where they are?" Alfred asked suddenly, pursuing a new line of reasoning.

Batman paused, his hand on the door of the Batmobile and his back to his most cherished friend and father. "I have the locators."

"But only for Robin," the kind man interrupted, his voice gentle as he reasoned quietly with his eldest – and most difficult – charge. "Perhaps you might also find the Flash using the JLA's systems, but what about the others? How can you find them without talking to Oracle?"

"Don't need them," he ground out, opening the door to the Batmobile but not getting in. Although impatient with a conversation he saw no point to, he was unwilling to end it for fear of alienating the only friend he had left to him. He didn't want to be that alone. Alone yes, but not deserted.

Alfred drew himself up to his full height, gathering his internal strength to say the painful words: "If you don't need them, Master Bruce, shall I also assume that you do not need me as well?"

He froze, his heart clenching inside his chest despite himself and his vaunted self-control. Slowly he turned to face the kindly old man. He pushed his cowl back slowly, allowing the two of them to finally see the haunted pain that filled his eyes and plumbed the depths of his soul. "Don't say that, Alfred," Bruce whispered in a voice twisted and torn. "You know I didn't mean that."

Alfred met his gaze steadily, allowing his own shields to drop for a few seconds and reveal his own pain of loss...and the pain of a feared loss. "Then humour an old man and check in with Oracle." A beat. "I don't want to lose you as well," Alfred added in a murmur, knowing the other would hear him regardless. The shared emotions passed quickly between the two as they spoke to each other without words, charging the atmosphere around them with released tension.

Bruce nodded heavily to show he'd understood at last. "I swear it."

Alfred nodded slightly, satisfied Bruce would do as he'd promised. "Very well then, Master Bruce. I shall have your robe waiting for you when you return."

A small half-smile appeared on his lips then disappeared just as quickly. "Thanks for the offer Alfred, but don't wait up for me. I don't know how long I'll be." With that, he pushed the cowl down and was Batman once more.

A quick glance at Alfred confirmed to Cassandra that it was now safe to present herself, for the butler once again had his shields back up. Careful to keep her face impassive, as if she hadn't heard what had just transpired, she stepped calmly into the small puddle of light spreading around the Cray and Alfred's comforting presence.

"And me?"

Batman looked up at her interruption, half-in half-out of the Batmobile. He gave no sign of surprise that she had chosen that moment to speak – if he ever felt any, that is. "Stay here. Keep Gotham safe."

Alfred stood beside her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, ignoring with his dignified manner the fact that her muscles tensed involuntarily before she managed to relax them again. "Don't you worry, Master Bruce. We shall keep every criminal on their toes tonight. You just go and keep the young Master's memory safe."

Cassandra thought she saw Batman nod once infinitesimally before the cockpit sealed shut and the Batmobile roared away into the night, but she couldn't be truly sure in the darkness of the largely unlit cave. Whatever the case, he had made no verbal acknowledgement – as he always did – but still she knew the Bat was grateful for their support.

She turned wide dark eyes on the one man she truly and completely trusted and asked simply (warily): "Memory?"

The kindly old man looked down at her, a soft, sad smile on his worn features as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. In that moment, he looked every one of his years. "Yes, my child. I'm afraid memory is now all we have left of young Master Richard."

With that simple statement of undeniable truth, her self-control failed her, a phenomenon that had only happened so rarely that the number of times did not exceed her number of fingers. It failed her, it failed her for the second time tonight.

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There was something about a late season dusk that brought the Gothamites out of their shells and homes to experience the cool and comfortably brisk air of the often oppressive and dangerous city. It was a peaceful time, when one generally could walk the streets without too much fear when passing dark alleys, when the criminals were at home sleeping in preparation for the coming night of activities, when the ever-vigilant police allowed themselves to relax a little and converse with the passers-by, and when the shop owners were relaxed and actually happy to be in this city.

Batman, of course, hated it. He hated the extra traffic on the streets that forced him to use the narrow back streets, hated all the extra people that clogged the sidewalks and made the risk of innocents getting hurt during a crime that much higher, and he especially hated with a vengeance the light that filled the city, even if it was on the wane. It made negotiating the city that much more complicated, even with the advanced steering and technology he employed in the Batmobile.

It was hard – translated: almost-impossible-hard – to use his prodigious stealth abilities when everyone could see you anyway.

That was why he didn't call Oracle the moment he left the Batcave. It was hard enough getting the BM-6 Batmobile around the tight and sharp corners of the back streets of Gotham as it was, let alone while being distracted by some conversation he didn't want to have anyway.

Nevertheless, a promise of the Bat was his word, and Batman never broke a promise he had made – and especially not one made to Alfred – if he could possibly help it. Perhaps that was the reason why it had never seemed to take him quite so short a time- even accounting for the traffic – to get out of Gotham and onto the motorway to Bludhaven. It seemed to be only a few seconds to his mind between the time he left the Wayne Manor and the time when he felt it was now safe for him to call Oracle – in reality, it was something much closer to fifteen minutes.

His eyes never left the road in front of the racing car as he dialled Oracle's number into the communication system built into the Batmobile's dashboard. A black-gloved finger tapped on the steering wheel as he waited for the call to go through – more from anger than grief and impatience, he believed.

As always, Oracle knew who was calling before she even picked up. When she came on-line, her greeting was cool and lacking the cheer he usually found refreshing: "Batman, long time no see. I take it you're back in one piece from your mission."

He grunted an affirmative as he blasted past the domestic cars travelling at a relatively sedate pace down the freeway. In his wake he left a rushing stiff breeze in his wake that rocked even the heavily-loaded semi travelling in the slow rightmost lane.

On the other end of the line, Oracle had to roll her eyes. _'Typical uncommunicative Bat.'_ "So is there anything I should know about it or not?" she asked bluntly, in no mood for games.

He made no reply for a second, letting her stew on his lack of answer. Once he felt she had enough, he stated simply:

"Alfred told me."

Oracle held back a sigh and closed her eyes, rubbing her temples wearily. Just what she needed...not. Now she had to handle the Bat as well as everything else. "I know," she replied just as tersely. "Robin and I asked him to." Saying she'd pleaded with Alfred to do it would've been more truthful, but she didn't need to tell him that, did she?

"You should've called me."

Oracle breathed out deeply, trying gamely not to get mad with the Bat – and not doing that good, even though she knew he was probably feeling everything as bad as she was...if not worse. "I know we should've called you," she answered smoothly with as much calmness as she could muster – which is to say that her sarcasm was thick enough to need an oxy-welder to cut, "but it's not like you left me a number for emergencies. What was I supposed to do, light the signal to say I wanted you? You had Robin handling that, remember?"

Batman ignored the pointed sarcasm, dismissing it as irrelevant. What mattered was the evidence, the trail that would lead him to the killer. "What about the evidence?"

"We've got a little, not much. Considering that we've been operating during the day, it's a pretty good result," she bit out, making an almost superhuman effort to keep a lid on her rising ire and her shortening fuse. The only reason she didn't throw a tantrum was that she had too much expensive equipment in her Oracle room and she literally couldn't afford to destroy anything. But boy did she really want to throw something at the smug little—!

"I want details, not excuses," he growled into the comm, swinging the car around a slow-moving car and surging forward like a torrent of water bursting through a dam.

So Oracle gritted her teeth, squeezed hard on the bean ball she kept by her desk for occasions like this, and told him what he wanted to hear. She told him that the DNA results had been inconclusive, that the fingerprints matched Dick's 100, that the body in the morgue was probably Dick's judging by mutilation and its charred condition alone, that Tempest was investigating where the body came from with Donna's help, that Robin was taking the other two Titans with him to the Lair, and that the police had different views on the case but weren't much help otherwise. The only thing she didn't mention, in fact, was that she had allowed Robin to contact Joey Flaherty and ask for his help – instead telling him that they'd found out about the body in the morgue from the BPD's files...which was near enough to the truth anyway.

Batman remained silent after Oracle finished, thinking.

The fingerprints matched, but the DNA test was useless. Decomposition and the burning of the body would have eliminated useful physical evidence. Tempest was best suited to do whatever he was doing with the water in the harbour, coming from Atlantis and all. Moreover, there was no guarantee that the body would've been dumped anywhere near where Dick was actually...killed.

All they really could do was retrieve the body from the morgue for more detailed study, and check the body more closely against the hand. He told Oracle as much in short, terse sentences.

Oracle, however, now had no patience for what he was saying other than to note it in the back of her mind while she concentrated on other things.

"Never mind that," she said dismissively with a subtle undertone to her voice that Batman could not quite identify, "something more important has come up. I'm linking you onto Robin's transmission from the Lair. You'll be able to listen but you won't be able to send anything." Then there was the small beep and burst of static to tell him the transmission was being re-directed, but after that he heard very little.

Nothing but silence.

Why was Oracle so adamant that he should hear this silence? What was so important about it? He could listen to deeper silence in his car right now without any need for interference.

He opened his mouth to demand an answer to his questions, but some gut instinct made him hesitate.

Then, as his ears adjusted to the silence, he dimly heard the distinctive clinking of metal on metal as some kind of metallic objects were moved. He put the slightly strange quality to the noise – a quality he couldn't fully isolate – down to the fact that it was being recycled through at least three sets of speakers and probably twice that in the number of computer systems that compressed and tweaked the transmission for easier transfer. It was probably just static combined from all the lines being used to get it to his car.

And then he heard the pleading, coughing whisper that sent a cold chill spreading through his heart:

_**"Please...stop....no...no m-more...please....please.....n-n-no-"**_

Dick? How could that quavering, weakened voice belong to his bright, healthy, athletic son?

And then he realised why the transmission sounded slightly unusual. In the background he was actually hearing the sound of arcing electricity, not static as he had first thought. The chill began to spread through his soul as he made the connection between the weakness in Dick's voice and the electricity.

And in the very next moment, his darkest fears were confirmed.

_**And then he screamed...**_  
_**"What are the access codes to the Oracle mainframe?"**_

His heart pounded in his chest in time to the cries echoing in his ears and he found himself blinking furiously to clear his blurred vision as his eyes watered. He didn't want to listen, he didn't want to hear his son's agony and feel the pain spreading throughout his own body in a sympathetic reaction. But something inside him held him fast, held him still, held him there, making him listen hard even as he so badly wanted to pull away.

_**...and he screamed...**_  
_**"How do I get complete access to the JLA Watchtower?"**_

His grip on the steering wheel tightened slightly and his foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator, but still the road to Bludhaven stretched out before him without end. Still the screams continued, and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

_**"What is Oracle's true identity?!"**_  
_**...and he screamed...**_

Hating the helplessness swamping his thoughts, he pressed down harder on the accelerator pedal and ignored the honking cars as he whipped past them. If the determination of his thoughts could count for speed, he would already be in Bludhaven, but in reality all they did was torment him further on a road that never ended.

And then the screams suddenly stopped.

He welcomed the silence when it fell, welcoming the respite from Dick's cries of pain even though he feared just as much what the sudden stop might mean.

He could not bring himself to think too deeply about that.

_**"Give it up, Nightwing. Tell me what I want, and we'll leave you alone."**_

He let out a dark growl of his own at the deep, electronically modified voice that over-rode the heavy breathing of its captive. The dark, evil voice filled his ears and echoed within the car and within his soul – but try as he might, even accounting for the modifications to the voice, he still didn't recognise it.

He might not know exactly who he was up against, but he did know that there was a new criminal in Bludhaven, a dark and dangerous opponent who had already managed to capture and torture Nightwing...and kill him.

_**"Tell me the answers, Grayson, or I promise that the next person in this chair will be your precious 'Babs'...and this time I'll make sure you'll watch and feel everything we do to her."**_

The initial chill he had felt at the beginning of this transmission deepened and spread throughout his entire being. He felt the tenacious claws of shock try to anchor themselves in his soul, but he resisted him with the strength of his burning anger.

This wasn't some random act.

The questions they were asking were far too exact and precise and knowledgeable for that. Had they only kidnapped Officer Grayson, the questions should've been far more mundane. Had they captured Nightwing, they wouldn't have known to threaten Babs.

_**"Now, unless you want your precious girlfriend lying where you are now, tell me where Superman's kryptonite bullet is."**_

No, this wasn't random. This newcomer knew exactly what he was doing...and furthermore, he was doing it well. He had probably been following Dick for a couple of months before the actual abduction...which led him to wonder in some distant part of his mind who else already had their identity compromised. The rest of his mind was focused on the transmission, hating what was to come even as he dared not turn it off in case he missed some vital clue.

But the worst was still to come.

_**"Unda....Mannn'rrrrr.....Baat.....caaaavvvvvve..."**_

The Batmobile raced down the highway like a demon possessed, far in excess of the speed limit. It literally left in its dust the other cars on the Gotham-Haven highway that were full of workers returning home. It cut off almost every car it overtook and cared nothing for lane markings or braking distances. Its driver, however, didn't notice how bad his automatic driving skills had become. His hands were clenched around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white underneath his gloves as his anger raged.

The existence of Superman's bullet was common knowledge both inside and outside the superhero community, just as it was common knowledge that the bullet was in Batman's possession. _'He broke him.'_ Since Dick's captor had proved himself aware of Dick's 'night job', he found himself very suspicious that he – whoever he was – already knew exactly where the bullet was. _'He broke him on a useless question.'_ Surely Dick would've made the same connection he did. _'Broken on such a tiny thing.'_ So why didn't he resist it? _'Broken.'_ Why did he have to give in?

_**"Check him."**_

He gritted his teeth and forced the mounting frustration away. He would deal with that irrelevant baggage later, after these sadistic b–––––ds were put away where they belonged. Then he could beat all the practice dummies he ever cared to own into oblivion as much as he wanted.

In the meantime, he would have plenty of tension to take this current mission right into its completion.

_**"Gone."**_

The Batmobile literally leapt into the night as the accelerator pedal hit the floor of the car with a loud thunk. The starlite lenses in his cowl were millimetres wide, his eyes were so narrowed and tight with angry pain. The interior of the car was as silent as a crypt, but both Bruce and Batman were mentally raging against the Fates for the unfair hand they'd been dealt.

His son was gone...and he never even got the chance to say goodbye.

Dick was gone for good...

Damn it all.

Damn his torturers to hell.

Damn Robin for not reporting in.

Damn Oracle for not telling him.

Damn the car for not getting him to the Lair fast enough.

And the harshest of Damns on himself for not acting sooner.

_**"Revive him...again."**_

He had a bare moment of peace until he realised exactly what the three words meant. He allowed a hiss to escape his tightly clenched lips while he tried his best not to rip the steering wheel off the steering column – which is to say that it stayed on only because the hard polymer casing on the steering wheel was made of sterner stuff than he remembered.

_**"They broke him, killed him, then did it all over again." A sucked-in breath. "The Bastards."**_

The vicious whisper from Roy Harper spoke directly to Batman's heart and mind at once. For once, the World's Greatest Detective and the Whining Weapon Wielder were actually operating on the same page.

The people that had done this to their dear companion/friend/brother/son had sadistically drawn it out over and over again, wringing everything they could out of the mind of Dick Grayson from even beyond death, before they discarded whatever was left like yesterday's news.

_**"You know, I never did quite figure out the heritage of those twins.... But aren't you glad I found 'em first?"**_

He growled deep within his throat as he whipped the wheel around and put the car into a power-slide around a tight turn on the motorway, promptly ignoring the squeal of the car's brakes and the blaring, annoyed horns of those he had cut off by the slick manoeuvre.

He knew that voice.

It was the voice of the man on the tape, the man that tortured his son, the one that inflicted pain and suffering on his son until death was preferable to life, until all hope was gone and Dick's special soul was broken into tiny shards. This was the one who had systematically taken his son apart piece by painful piece...

And this 'someone' was going to pay, and pay dearly.

Preferably with his life, if Batman had anything to say about it.

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It was thirty-six past six and night was quickly falling outside a little known warehouse tucked into a deserted corner of Bludhaven docks, but those inside did not notice nor care. Immobile they stood, glaring at each other from opposite sides of the wooden building.

On one side, there stood three of the world's superheroes: Arsenal of the weapons, The Flash of the lightning strike, and Robin of the dark and mysterious Bat-Clan. In various stages of defensive stances they stood, waiting and analysing, their eyes stormy with raging anger for the one across the room.

On the other side, there stood one man. One man stood in their road, crossing their paths in a calculated and dramatic manner that promised to be unforgettable...in more ways then one.

This one man stepped forward calmly, giving no sign of the disquiet any normal man would be feeling at face this three when they were angered. His strange suit shimmered and shifted in shades of purple, green, and gold as he moved forward, easily seen yet strangely concealing him in the shadows. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am the being known as the 'Black Phoenix'," he said grandly, giving them a mocking bow. "And before we cut to the festivities, let me take this opportunity to say that Dick Grayson proved to be one of my favourite masterpieces...until the little runt died on me once too often."

Robin whipped his collapsible bo staff into its longest extension, barely managing to restrain himself to follow Batman's training on patience. He badly wanted to hit something, anything to make the internal ache dissipate, but a small part of his mind that was large enough to keep control knew that rushing in blindly was suicide. As much as it killed him inside, he had to stay patient and watch. He needed to find out what he'd be getting himself into before he committed himself.

Apparently, the Titans at the Lair had the same ideas on needing to hit something but didn't have his restraint. Wally's image blurred for a moment and then he reappeared in his Flash uniform – moving as fast as he did, it was a small stretch of his abilities to dash home, change into his unform, and dash back before the rest even realised he was gone. Similiar, within moments there appeared in Arsenal's deadly hands a crossbow – fully loaded, cocked, and aimed at the Phoenix's heart. As disadvantaged as he was by not being in his uniform and unable to do a quick change like The Flash, it didn't slow him down one bit – one of the advantages of having a semi-public identity. Besides, it wasn't like Roy Harper didn't have access to his own stash of concealible weaponry.

"I'll wipe that grin off ya face, ya little—"

Oracle's voice suddenly over-rode Arsenal's cry of rage not a moment too soon. "Robin?? Are you there? Come in."

_'S––t, where did they come from?'_ All of a sudden, he was surrounded by what seemed to be twelve-foot high men that were just as wide, covered with muscles and tattoos...and gunning for his hide. Literally. "Yeah, I'm here," he replied distantly, his speech centers working on automatic as he burst into motion. "Uh, can we..." he ducked a wild bullet and swung blindly with his staff, "...talk later?" He grunted in pain when his staff connected to a muscled forearm with as little effect as hitting a mountain with a tiny pebble.

"A little busy?"

"Not so..." he twisted out of the path of another bullet and swung his staff again but with extra power behind it, "...you notice." This time he connected solidly with the gun and knocked it down to the floor and out of the fight. A quick side-flip-and-kick and the holder was down and out for the count. That just left him about sixteen more to go in extremely close quarters – but there could've easily been more, seeing as he was bouncing off the walls too quickly for a completely accurate count.

"I hear gunfire." Oracle's voice was filled with concern, and more than a little worry. "Are you clear?"

He flipped over Baddie No. 7 and let loose a handful of batarangs and stylized 'R' throwing stars at three opponents. "Not yet," he replied grimly, not staying around to see his 'R's connect before he had to duck and roll to the side to avoid a spray of bullets. One of the klutzes gathered round him had a Heckler Koch MP5. It worked much like the old-fashioned Uzi, but far more effectively and lethally. This one could kill from well over three hundred paces, and was cheap enough on the black-market that they were the weapon of choice for the more sophisticated criminal. The only advantage Robin saw in it was the spray of bullets was far more likely to hit one of the goons than it was him – as they had a few times already.

"Need backup?" he heard Oracle ask almost casually.

"Would be nice." He ducked underneath a wildly swinging fist and whipped his staff along just above the floor, whacking someone's feet together and dropping them to the floor. "I mean,..." a quick side kick rendered the guy unconscious and he was up and fighting again, "...twenty-seven gun-totin' yahoos against two nice guys is a bit much, don't'cha think?" he asked casually, trying not to sound as worried as he really was.

"Two? Who's with you?"

He twisted out of another spray of bullets and let loose yet another handful of throwing stars, risking a quick glance across the warehouse floor for his companion as his twist developed into a quick tumble under a goon. "There's Arsenal, but he's got his hands full with fifteen to my eight...and that ain't countin' those we've already downed."

"And Flash?"

"Fightin' shadows," he replied shortly as he bounced off one guy's chest – probably breaking a few of the other's ribs in the process, if that crack was any indication – to intent on using it like a springboard to propell himself over the head of a goon that had moments before been trying to put him in a headlock from behind to give anything more intelligent (or explanatory) than that.

Besides, there was really no other way to describe the fight currently in progress between the speedster and the mysterious new criminal in town.

A quick tapping of keys. "Hang tight, Robin. Donna and the Bat are already on their way. Tempest say's he's on the trail of something too hot to drop right now, but he'll be there as soon as he can."

This time Robin only grunted in reply as he kicked out with both legs while still in the air and connected with the jaws of two more goons. Now there was only three left, even though he'd only taken down ten of the original eighteen or so. The others had gone down from so-called "friendly fire." _'Three against one, eh? Piece'a cake.'_

A few more kicks, flips, and slaps with his staff and they were all down for the count, leaving one panting Robin standing in their midst with barely a mark on him. "Serves 'em right for messin' with us, anyway," he muttered to himself, taking a quick moment to wipe the sweat of his forehead. He glanced around, looking for more targets, but didn't like what he saw instead.

Arsenal seemed to have attracted the largest opponents with the bigger guns and tighter trigger fingers. The usually brash Titan was twisting and rolling around too many bullets to count, often utilising small gaps that barely even existed to evade the deadly fire. In fact, he was being forced to spend so much time simply keeping himself alive that he had no time to fire off any weapons, which was probably why he still had thirteen of his original eighteen gathered around him.

Tightening his grip on his bo staff, Robin ran over to help his fellow hero. As he sprinted across the dealership floor, he allowed himself a quick moment to glance quickly over to where the Flash should've been taking care of the 'Black Phoenix'. His heart sank still further at what he found.

Wally, to put it nicely, was having his butt handed to him. Even with all his speed, the Scarlet Speedster seemed to having difficulty hitting this 'Black Phoenix', while the latter had no trouble at all connecting with the young meta. Even to Robin's inexperienced eyes, it seemed more like The Flash was shadow-boxing than fighting for his life – except that these shadows were hitting back with devastating power. The way the fight was going, Flash wouldn't be able to evade their full power for much longer. Sooner or later the combination attacks were going to start landing, from which it would be only a matter of time until Wally was down for good.

Heart in his throat, Robin forced himself to look away, knowing he couldn't do anything to help The Flash right now. He had an Arsenal to save from the flying bullets and their gun-toting owners first. Then, only then, the two of them might be able to save Wally and personally take revenge for the lost life of their closest friend and brother.

So it was that his attention returned to Roy's battle against the goons summoned by this Black Phoenix, and not a moment too soon. Even as he raced towards Arsenal, one of the bullets must've surely connected, for Roy suddenly stumbled and fell for a moment to his knees, his hand moving to his side unconsciously as a grimace of pain flew across his battered features.

Robin almost paused in his race across the dealership floor, fearing the worst for one terrible moment.

The moment passed, and Robin assured himself that it couldn't be all that serious, for Roy seemed to be instantly up on his feet and dishing out a little "payback" to the goon responsible.

The moment passed, and his instincts screamed to him that the sudden movement in the shadows behind Arsenal – opposite side of the room to where Wally and the Phoenix were dukin' it out – meant that even more goons were zeroing in on Roy and he.

"Oh man. We're doomed," he muttered to himself. "I so hate it when I'm right."

And then the fight was on in earnest.

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In some ways, there was something to be said for open comm channels. Not that Oracle particularly enjoyed hearing the grunts, thunks and thwaps of flesh being hit by flesh – or boots, staffs, or escrima sticks, for that matter – but it did allow her to get 'down and dirty with the troops'...especially when they tended to forget that she was listening to their every word.

And it wasn't often that Robin tended to forget about leaving his comm open, having been trained by Batman to 'multi-task' his thoughts to a very high degree. Even so, everyone has their limits. Sometimes even she forgot that Robin was still technically a kid. And somehow, she kind of doubted that he knew she heard the quiet comment:

_**"Oh man. We're doomed. I so hate it when I'm right."**_

It wasn't exactly something either Tim or Robin would classify as being fit for her ears...or for Batman's ears. Then again, he didn't know Batman was listening in, did he?

On that thought, she opened up an auxiliary channel to the Batmobile. "Batman? What's your E.T.A.?"

"Five minutes," he growled, as unhappy about that prospect as she was. He knew better than most that Robin wasn't exactly pessimistic by nature. Seeing as the kid had already gone up against the likes of The Joker, Scarecrow, Ventriloquist, Two-Face, and all the other of Gotham's resident psychos, they both hated to think what would make him accept defeat before he even got a chance to really fight.

Oracle sighed softly, but still acknowledged his answer and disconnected. Then she opened up an auxiliary channel to Troia, the only other hero currently available and close enough to make a difference. "Troia, this is the Oracle. What's your E.T.A. to the Lair?"

"One minute at most," came the quick reply.

"Try and make it in under thirty seconds," Oracle replied grimly as she listened to the sounds coming from the main channel. "Otherwise you might not have anyone to rescue."

Oracle returned to Robin's transmission just in time to hear a sickening cry and the thud of a falling body. Her heart instantly leapt into her throat at the silence that followed.

Which hero had fallen? Arsenal? The Flash? Or Robin?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Onwards he raced, coming ever closer to the goal that still seemed so far (too far) away as he too listened to the silence over the Batmobile's speakers with mounting concern.

"Hero Down," Robin's suddenly broadcast, his voice shaking strangely. "I repeat, Flash is down and out. Arsensal's chargin' in, and I'm joining hi—"

Batman reached over and flicked a few switches on the dash without moving his eyes from the road, breaking into the transmission to speak to Robin for the first time since his arrival from his undercover mission. "Robin," he interrupted in his patented growl, "I want you to stay put. Let Arsenal go for now."

"Batman? But— Sir—" Robin paused and swallowed, readjusting his thoughts to his partner's presence. Reluctantly slowing his forward charge even as he protested the order, he tried again: "But sir, I think he's injured. He'll have no chance if I don't help him out."

"How bad is he hurt?" Oracle broke in.

"At best, a bullet graze or flesh wound along his side. Could be a lot worse, but I can't see in this rotten light. I— Awwww maaann, where did you guys come from? You multiply worse then rabbits." Robin interrupted himself suddenly, then finished in a rush: "Sorry guys, but I gotta go. More goons to fry."

Then there was only the sounds of grunts and the thwaps of bo staff hitting flesh for company.

The accelerator hit the floor once more and the Batmobile seemed almost to go airborne, its dark-lit body seeming like a streak of black lightning as it hurtled down the Bludhaven motorway. It travelled as if a nightmarish monster leaping forwards into the darkness of the falling night, freshly released from the wrought-iron gates of fiery hell and determined to devour and overcome anything and everything that stood in its way. The quasi-intelligent computer on-board thrust it through the night at speeds far past even Batman's ability to operate at, seeming to feed of the myriad of dark emotions and impulses in the psyche of its driver to propel its headlong rush even further. Any who found themselves glimpsing the beast that was the Batmobile or the thirty-foot long flame streaming out of its exhaust had reason indeed to feel fear and awe trembling up their spine.

Yes, Batman was indeed on his way.

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_thwap wham_

How many times had he swung his staff at some opponent in the last couple of minutes?

_bang thwap_

If hard pressed to answer, Robin could honestly say that he didn't know. They all tended to run one into another after about two hundred swings, which was one hundred and ninety swings after he'd stopped counting.

He'd also stopped counting the downed men a long time ago, right about when he started needing to stand on their unconscious bodies because there was no clear floor-space left.

_whack smack_

He only hoped the backup Oracle had promised him would arrive soon. If it didn't, he'd either completely break his bo staff, or he'd miss a stroke through sheer exhaustion. It didn't matter which one, really, because either way he was going to end up getting himself killed in very short order if he didn't have help.

The problem was that either the goons were getting harder and harder muscles, or he just wasn't putting as much force behind each blow as he had been when this all started. Although the build-up of lactic acid in his arms and his legs were almost at intolerable levels, he was still a Bat Boy through and through....and he knew that Bat Boys never got tired.

Besides, he'd never live it down with the Bat....even if it certainly seemed to his eyes as if his opponents were getting bigger and stronger.

_thwack grunt bam_

His staff wasn't designed to take on so many giants all at once, anyway. For that matter, he wasn't designed to inflict as many punishments as he had to keep dishing out just to keep abreast of everyone. At this rate, he reckoned he only had enough left in his tank for about twenty more hits if he played his cards right.

If Troia arrived before he collapsed.

_swish oooofff thhh-whiiip_

Right now, his main focus – besides escaping from the tangle of squirming bodies that had strangely overtaken him – revolved around simply keeping his eyes open for the next few seconds...and the seconds after that...and the seconds after that.

_wham 'Why me?' smash_

It wasn't that he didn't have the desire to fight down till his last breath, being trained by the Bat and all, but sometimes the body couldn't fully go to the places where the mind lead it. Try as he might, not even he could convince his body to keep fighting for much longer.

Don't get him wrong. For a child of his age and upbringing, his endurance and stamina levels were well and truly up there with the best. Normally he could stay awake far longer than the forty hours he'd managed so far...but then again, normally he wasn't confronted with the death of his brother, the task of gathering evidence from a charred husk of a body, keeping the Titans together long enough to get something done, giving away parts of himself in the process that he couldn't afford to give, then watching a video of his own brother's breaking under torture and subsequent death, and fighting what must surely be an entire army of impossibly tall and big and agile opponents.

_thwack swish slam 'owwww that huurrttss'_

Was it really his fault that he felt as if he could sleep for an entire month if only he could keep those damned nightmares at bay?

_'I wonder who' bam ' ticked off' smack 'this time to' wham 'get this?'_

And then it happened.

_slam 'Hey, where'd that' swish 'come fro—'_

Although there had already been quite a few fists coming his way that he hadn't managed to deflect with his staff, he had always been able to twist far enough at the last moment so that he never felt the full force of the blows. However, he had no way of dodging the spring-loaded punch aimed directly at his ribs when he had already turned aside to his fullest extent in an attempt to avoid yet another spray of bullets and his staff was already committed to hitting the hand guilty of pressing that trigger.

His vision flashed white then black as the powerful blow landed on his lower ribs, winding him and narrowing his focus down to the darkness gathering in his vision and the terrible, biting pain that filled his chest from the blow. Before he could comprehend it, he was flying backwards through the air. He landed on the ground and skidded back a few meters, amazingly not impacting against the feet of those he had yet to take down before finally coming to rest against a wall or some other kind of tall obstruction on the floor of the warehouse.

His head impacted against the wall with a dull _thunk_ just as he saw the remaining thugs from the small army that had beset him heading his way and heard Oracle start to say something in his ear. Then everything went dark and he knew nothing more.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He had exactly two minutes till he arrived in Bludhaven.

Three minutes had passed of listening to flesh hitting flesh, of the dull _thunks_ of attacks being blocked by a hero's body, an amulet, or a bo staff. It had been three long minutes of grunts, crashes, thuds of falling bodies, cries of pain, and the sound of glass shattering.

Now that she was finished with Troia – the closing of the secondary channel between the two female heroes Batman confirmed with a quick glance at the display on his dash – Oracle decided now was the time to cut in on the action. "Robin, you need only hang in there for a few seconds more. Troia's almost there, and I-"

Oracle paused in mid-stream, suddenly realising that sickening _thunk_ of something hard hitting something heavy meant that she would be waiting for a reply which would never come – not for while anyway.

"Robin? Are you okay?"

Silence was the firm reply. In the background they heard heavy footsteps echoing heavily on the wooden floorboards of the Lair – footsteps of more than one person forebodingly heading straight for the fallen Robin.

Then the footsteps stopped, and the sickening sounds of flesh hitting flesh began again....but this time there was no answering sounds of a hero in full self-defense mode.

His mouth tightened into a thin white line and his grip on the wheel was hard enough to create hairline stress-fractures in the hard polymer wheel. He whipped the car down the turn into the Bludhaven off-ramp, his mind only half on his driving.

"C'mon kid, answer me. Are you there? Robin? ROBIN?" Oracle demanded, by now almost frantic with worry in the parts of her that were still allowed to feel.

Still no reply. There weren't even grunts of pain from the boy from the beating they all could hear going on but could do nothing to stop. The youth was simply too deeply out of it to respond to Oracle's demands.

All of a sudden, though, Bruce had cause to be thankful that Dick had chosen to be friends with meta-humans that could fly. He had never been so relieved to hear the Amazonian War Cry as when Troia made her belated arrival. The first thing she did, judging from the sounds alone, was strike at the thugs beating up the defenseless bodies of the fallen heroes.

He glanced at the clock again as Oracle once more called anxiously for a response from his youthful (too young) partner.

Thirty-two seconds down, one minute and twenty-eight seconds to go.

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_**"...you there? Robin? ROBIN?"**_

_'......oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh.....'_

The first coherent thought that came to him was that he couldn't be dead. If he was dead, he wouldn't hurt as bad as he did. His entire body was like one big open bruise, but the bruises seemed worse around his chest and his skull. Surely he would remember hurting this badly before he...before he...before....he........ what did he do again?

_'....hhhuuurrrrrrttttttttssssssss....'_

His second thought was to wonder why he always seemed to wake up with throbbing heads. Just once, just once, he would like to wake up in a situation like this without a dozen dancing demons in his skull hell-bent on bashing their way out using his brain as their clubs.

His head reflexively jerked as something blunt and very hard hit him at high velocity in the ribs. There was barely time to identify the object that was undoubtedly the cause of most of the pain in his body as a boot before he registered the involuntary move of his head and reacted – violently. He immediately winced and stilled his movements so he could try and cradle his poor head as each of the dancing demons promptly cloned themselves and became triplets. _'Oookaaay, don't do that again for a while...'_ He stilled his body and clenched his eyes shut tighter as the world around him did a few lazy somersaults while his stomach tried to outdo the world and pull off a quad inside his abdomen.

Judging it was safe to move once the severe dizziness and nausea passed, he weakly lifted his leaden arms and brought his hands up to his throbbing temples. His judgement however, just like everything else on this strange night, proved completely unfounded in reality when another foot hit him in the same spot as before. He uttered a choked, gasping intake of air at the fiery pain that ran all around his chest like a vice, squeezing his lungs out of any air they might have possessed originally as he belatedly curled into a tight ball to protect himself. Bright lights played before his dazed eyes as his befuddled brain tried to get a grip on both the fire in his chest and the demons in his head at the same time and only managed to be all to aware of the effects of both. In doing so, however, he managed to completely lose control of his stomach.

He had only a moment to be thankful that he hadn't eaten anything in over eighteen hours before his world was immersed in painful torture once more...this time, however, from a cause external to his aching body.

How could a woman scream a war-cry so loud without losing her lungs?

He winced again and placed a hand on his sore ear as the unnaturally loud voice echoed within his throbbing skull. _'Don't shout, don't shout. I'm here,'_ he thought fuzzily. _'I ain't going anywhere till the demons vacate the premises and give me my brain back.'_

The ground rumbled beneath him as something hit the floor with a loud crash. He gripped the wooden floorboards and held on for dear life, his fuzzy thoughts at first tentatively identifying the shaking as another earthquake and therefore expecting the roof to come crashing down on him at any moment.

The anticipated torrent of debris and suffocating dust never arrived, for which he was eternally thankful. At least something in this topsy-turvy day was going right.

_**"C'mon, answer me kid! ROBIN?!"**_

Scratch that. Did Oracle really need to scream that last word?

He really should answer her, he fleetingly knew, at least just to let her know that he was alive if not completely well – and to stop her screams coming through the comm in his abused ears. He couldn't be dead and in this much he? He didn't think he was dead, anyway, and that surely counted for something somewhere. Now if only he could figure out how to get his voice to work when the demonic dancers were using his most of his cognitive functions to bash his brains out...

Finally, in a groaning voice that wavered more than it held steady, he managed to rasp out, "Hhhhhoooooooooo boooyyy.....whaatzz sha numba ovv daa trux aah hit?"

"Robin, thank goodness you're still with us," Oracle replied, relieved beyond description at finally getting a response, even if it was slurred almost to the point of being intelligible. "Can you tell me what happened?"

_'In other words: "Get off your backside and take a look around, bird-brain."'_ He groaned again as he somehow managed to roll over without moving his head – _'Careful!'_ – and then tried to get his feet under him. He managed to get up on one elbow at one point, but then he realized his feet had lost interest in the endeavour somewhere along the way and his elbow's determination to hold his weight was faltering badly. Within seconds, his elbow convinced itself it was a lost cause as well and collapsed under him, sending his battered body tumbling back to the floor.

His jaw seemed to hit the ground first, knocking his teeth together with enough force to cut off his tongue if it had been anywhere nearby. At least the dancers only cloned themselves to become twins, this time. He also discovered he had rib-cage, which he supposed was always a plus, even if he found out because it felt as if his ribs were on fire. Again.

He tried once more to get up, somehow managing to be aware of what all of his limbs were doing this time even if he wasn't in complete control of them. This time around, he actually got to the kneeling stage. He paused there for a moment, pleased he had managed to get everything to co-operate enough to get him up this far but also waiting for the confusion in his head to die down again.

"Robin?" Oracle queried, impatient for her answer. "Are you there? What's going on?"

_'Man, that woman's got no respect for the dead,'_ was his first coherent thought in response. _'Or the barely alive,'_ he amended a moment later, the pain telling him was definitely alive. For now he ignored her, more intent on leaving his vulnerable position on the floor than answering – he didn't have it within him to replicate this complicated process of standing again. He both hands on the floor and bodily pushed himself up while he tried to un-bend his stiff knees and simultaneously maintain enough of his balance not to fall over.

Finally, he was vertical, even if he wasn't exactly steady. He wavered back and forth on his feet as his brain tried to decide if it really wanted to be up where the air was thinner instead of on the nice, stable floor. He was very glad he was yet to actually open his eyes as the world slowly revolved around him. He had to place one hand on the nearby wall – the same wall he had knocked himself out on – before he felt anywhere near steady enough on his feet to answer: "Wha'...Hap'en?" he repeated slowly as he tried to force the world to stay still long enough to let him think. "Dunno' really," he muttered finally, convinced now that the world was too rebellious to listen to his pleas. "'Member d' fists, tho'"

"It's probably just a concussion, Robin," Oracle replied, forcing herself to focus on the greater picture. "Can you focus enough to tell me what's going on?"

_'Just a concussion?'_ he thought sardonically. _'I'll concuss her in a moment.'_

At least he was coherent enough not to say his thoughts aloud. Instead, he dared to crack open an eye and peek out at the brightness of the warehouse from where he stood in the shadows. He shut the eye again immediately. "Pr'tty bright...but t'ere were two Troi'z 'elpin' dree Royzz f'ght d' bad dude," he muttered, keeping his voice down for the sake of his throbbing head. He just knew he was going to have a goose-egg the size of Montana on the back of his head in the morning. This time he cracked open the other eye and was relieved to find that his photo-receptors had finally settled down – but not his optical nerves. "Hoooo boy, go'ta luv th' blury d'bble vishin..."

"What about the Phoenix's foot soldiers?"

"Can't zee 'em...Troia pr'bly took 'em all out anywayzz." He squinted, trying to clear his vision and evict the dancing demons in his skull through strength of will alone. "Wait..." he trailed off, unsure exactly what he was seeing.

"Robin? What is it?"

"I...uh..." The youth trailed off again, grumbling below the pickup level of the microphone something that sounded suspiciously like, "B'cum Rob'n an' see t'world, t'ey said. All I'm see'n' is stars an' bl'ck dots."

He closed his eyes and mentally tried to gather his thoughts on the task at hand. Surely there was some way he could get himself to think properly. After all, he'd had plenty of concussions as bad as this one – if not worse– before, and he'd functioned fine—

Suddenly he felt like giving himself a good strong kick in the rear – which he would've done if he didn't feel so bad – as he suddenly called to mind some of the training he'd received from the Bat prior to becoming Robin. He had been trained in quite a few of the mind-control techniques Bruce himself had been taught by a Tibetan monk during his travels around the world. One of the very first techniques he had learnt was one intended to completely block sensations of pain from certain parts of the body, allowing the user to perform physical feats that should really be impossible. None of the 'Bat-Clan' had completely mastered the technique, mainly because they used it to ease the pain more than trying to completely block the pain. Still, it was a more than an appropriate tool to throw at those annoying dancers infesting his skull.

Besides, pain was good. Pain meant he was alive. That was always good....wasn't it?

His thoughts whirled around him as he tried to concentrate, his awareness of the fight still going on around him against this strange 'Black Phoenix' prohibiting him from fully attaining the ocean of calm he needed to pull it off properly.

Time seemed to slow to a standstill, the seconds crawling by like hours on a stakeout as he tried desperately to enter a deep enough trance.

After what seemed to be an eternity, but was really only a few moments, he snapped back to reality and immediately heaved a small sigh of relief. The throbbing in his skull was still undeniably there, but he no longer had to be careful of how fast he moved and the photosensitivity was all but gone. He hadn't managed to pull it off as well as he normally did, but then he wasn't complaining.

Besides, there was no time to apply the technique again even if he so desired it. True to form of the way everything else had been going today, he had snapped back to reality just in time for the thudding sound of something heavy hitting the hard wooden floor of the converted warehouse to penetrate into his poor, abused brain.

"Roy jus' w'nt down like nuthin' I've seen," Robin spoke suddenly in a more normal tone, although his wavering voice made it clear he was still feeling slightly dazed from the powerful blow he'd woken from only moments ago in addition to what he'd just seen. "Tro'a's still goin' tho...I th'nk..."

A female's scream of pain cut him off, and was just as suddenly silenced. "Troia's down," Robin reported tiredly, closing his eyes to gather his waning strength even as he spoke.

Hearing footsteps suddenly, he snapped his eyes open just in time to see the Black Phoenix turning in his direction and advancing on him solidly. He licked his lips nervously, noticing for the first time that he was the only one left standing in the entire warehouse except for the Phoenix. "An' I'm gonna die now," he muttered to himself, by now not caring who was listening.

Robin instinctively backed up for every step that the Phoenix advanced but was stopped almost immediately when his back hit the wooden walls of the warehouse. He had no delusions of defeating this newcomer to the Bludhaven scene. The rate at which the Titans had gone down told him that he wouldn't last very long against this Black Phoenix – not with one or two of the demonic dancers still infesting his skull despite his best efforts.

Eyes locked on his foe, he sighed very softly and muttered to himself, "Right. One double order of concussion with a side-dish of knocked-out stuffing coming right up."

Straightening up and speaking slightly louder, Robin wearily summoned his best Bat-glare and injected enough (he hoped) Bat-confidence/defiance into his voice to growl: "Time for this little birdie to clip your wings, you sick little wannabe."

That done, he stared at the calmly approaching (madly sprinting) spectre with a semblance of calm as he automatically slipped into a defensive stance even though his heart wasn't in the fight. He only prayed that he wouldn't hurt much before the end came.

At least this time he remembered to turn the comm off before he started fighting...or trying to fight, anyway.

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Inside the building formerly known as Nightwing's Lair, the battle raged between twin birds of flame and of morning. Outside, however, it was quiet.

Too quiet.

Not even the occupants of the warehouses adjoining Nightwing's Lair noticed anything amiss on this night other than the fact that the twilight after sunset had lasted only five minutes instead of the usual fifteen. It just seemed like your average Bludhaven kind of night...which is to say that no one went out without being armed and that they always expected trouble of the worst kind. Those expectations were quite abundantly fulfilled when **he** came to town.

Batman.

His car roared through the streets in total disregard of traffic laws and the ever-present cops not fulfilling their duty. Even one or two of the local citizens came close – but always with room (a few millimetres) to spare – to being clipped by the car as it muscled its way through the evening traffic. The only reason that there wasn't an entire stream of police cars racing after the Batmobile with their sirens flashing and horns blaring was that they simply didn't have any car that could keep with the frantic (suicidal) pace that was being set.

Batman was in Bludhaven.

It had been two minutes since the first prolonged silence from his young partner, and only one minute since the boy had cut off all communications when he was about to fight this "Black Phoenix"...alone and unaided. It had seemed an eternity since then.

The Bat was not happy.

And when the Bat was unhappy, it was a good time to be out of the country. His driving skills when he got in these kind of states were enough to be lethal if the criminals – and civilians – weren't careful, let alone the ruthless beatings he was capable of delivering.

This driving skill – and lack thereof – was amply demonstrated when the Batmobile came to a sudden stop outside the converted warehouse that housed the Lair formerly used by Nightwing, but now lay empty. He went from one hundred and fifty kph down to zero in one second and over five meters – all without any sound. It was one of the advantages of having complete access to Wayne Tech's R&D departments, no questions asked.

The final position in which the car came to rest was highly illegal, with the car blocking about eighty percent of the street's thoroughfare – had there been any traffic on the road to begin with. The area was deserted, and rightly so. No one in their right mind wanted to be near this particular warehouse block on this darkening night.

Heedless of the sense of danger in the air, Batman was out of the car in an instant, his cape billowing behind as his feet fairly flew over the curb and towards the ladder to the fire-escape on the adjacent building.

Standard Bat operating procedure – even in PsychoBat mode – was to take a moment to examine the situation from the relative safety of the roof of an adjoining warehouse before he revealed himself to the occupants of the targeted building. As he focused on the scene through the skylight one storey below his position using the magnification of his lenses, the anger escalated.

Robin was already on his knees and doubled over as a result of the latest blow he had sustained. One hand wrapped protectively around his ribcage indicated where the last blow had landed, while his other arm braced the boy's weight and kept him from collapsing. He was panting heavily, sweat pouring off his brow as he struggled to recover his breath, as he raised his head slowly as if it weighed ten times heavier than it really did.

The strangely suited man stood over the battered youth silently for a moment, staring at the boy in an odd kind of appraisal – of what, Batman didn't know. Furthermore, Batman wasn't going to allow himself time enough to know, especially not when such time would come at the expense of his partner. He gripped the jump-line he had prepared earlier and leapt silently from the rooftop, aiming for the lighted skylight below.

As it turned out, he leapt off the roof just in time to see Robin fall.

Robin squinted up at his opponent through swollen eyes, unaware of the belated salvation rushing towards him. All he saw was the faintly glowing eyes of his tormentor, his heart only aware of wanting to end this now. "Wan-na-be..." he ground out slowly, gasping out the syllables between pained breaths as he deliberately baited his foe. _'C'mon, big guy. Hit me just once more and put me out of my misery for good....'_

High above, Batman had only just let go of the jump-line when the strangely suited man coldly punched the suffering boy in the jaw. The audible crack echoed throughout the night, the force of the blow jerking Robin's head back in what had to be the meanest case of whiplash in history. The powerful hit forced Robin's head back so far that his body had to go back with it or else risk a broken spine. His body slowly twisted as it fell back, allowing Batman to catch a quick glimpse of a face that was a mass of purplish-black bruises whose eyes were already swollen-shut behind the mask from the intense battering he had received from his opponent...Then the moment was past and Robin was still soundlessly falling backwards...falling...falling....

The skylight buckled and immediately disintegrated into splinters underneath the force of the blow Batman inflicted as he fell through, but he barely noticed except to ensure that his uniform did not get caught or torn on the sharp shards of glass.

The spent youth hit the floor on his back with a thud that echoed hollowly around the room and seemed unnaturally loud in Batman's ears. Robin didn't move again. His focus immediately shifted to the Phoenix, putting all his frustrated anger (guilt) into the blow he planned to make.

At that precise moment, the strangely suited man gave the body one final harsh kick to the head to be sure the boy was out, then paid the body no more mind. His eyes flicked up almost instinctively and barely widened at the sight of the angered Bat falling almost on top of him....

And then the strangest thing happened.

With his legs extended in front of him and locked in position, Batman had expected to connect solidly with the metallic suit of his opponent. However, just as he was about to make the connection with all his weight behind the blow...and the Phoenix disappeared. Actually, the Phoenix didn't disappear as much as he simply melted into the shadows.

Bruce had under half a second to unlock his legs and prepare his body for the brutal impact with the floor. He managed as he always did, smoothly turning the uncoordinated tumble into a roll to bleed off the excess momentum. He came to a stop in the shadows and was up on his feet in an instant, his cape swirling around him like a living thing as his gaze hunted for the newest Master Criminal to enter his life.

There was only himself, the shadows, and an eerily hollow room for company.

Then the electronically modified voice emerged from the shadows, its volume dialled down until it rumbled and echoed from every direction. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."

Batman whirled and let loose with a handful of batarangs and throwing stars at where he thought the voice came from, firing at everything and nothing all at once. He heard only the dull _thunks_ as the deadly objects hit the wooden walls and burrowed their way in.

Unperturbed by the flying missiles, the low growl continued to emerge from a shadow Batman swore he'd just fired at, "After what you and your brat did to me, I'm going to enjoy every second."

To his credit, Batman made no visible reaction to the menace-filled voice tearing the air asunder. He stealthily moved to the side, silently moving around the lairs in the apparent safety of the shadows. Eyes darted from side to side under the cowl, raking the room apart with their gaze in an effort to unmask their foe – and uncovering neither hide nor hair of his slippery opponent.

From his vantage point, Black Phoenix smiled as he tasted the Batman's suppressed fear, licking his lips behind his mask in a form of animalistic anticipation. For the first time in his life, he had turned the tables on the fabled Bat. The darkness was no obstacle for his dark-adjusted eyes, even without starlite lenses. Batman might as well have been wearing a neon signed shouting out "I'm here!" as far as the Phoenix was concerned. Even more noiseless than the Bat – if that was possible – he matched the Dark Knight move for move around the abandoned dealership, hidden eyes twinkling in twisted amusement as he stalked the other man.

Silence fell once again upon the dealership...for all about ten seconds.

Apparently tiring of this game of bat-and-prey, the two opponents made their moves at almost the same time. Batman, long suspecting that his prey was in fact behind him, whirled and threw twin batarangs in one smooth, fluid motion as his cape flared out in the wind caused by his movement. Even as his arm flew out and let loose the deadly projectiles, Black Phoenix had leapt forward and had begun to close the distance between them. With a casual gesture more reminiscent of swatting a fly, Phoenix plucked the 'rangs right of the air and held onto them as he bore down on Batman.

Quicker than thought, Batman twisted out of the way of the dangerous criminal and brought his hands down in a quick chopping action, aiming for a few critical nerve points. His hands only rebounded off the strange garment-like armour the Phoenix wore, the after-shocks vibrating up his arms like a piece of jello reacting to an earthquake. This Bruce ignored, much like he would a gnat flying past his face, and turned his offensive into a defensive block to a wild kick thrown by his masked foe.

The flurry of blows continued as the two engaged in a breath-taking duel of deadly intent, control of its outcome switching back and forth as quickly as the fight's location alternated between the shadows and the light. Evenly matched in more ways than one, this was a battle pitching brute strength against thought, youth against experience, hatefulness against the fear-inspiring, and the dark-hearted against true evil. Both fought for many reasons, each of them so similar in motivation even as they were light-years apart.

Love.  
Hate.

Grief.  
Glory.

Justice.  
Retribution.

Yes, there was a lot riding on this titanic battle, in more ways than one. Battles like this could govern a planet's entire future, and the instincts of both fighters told them that this encounter could be no different. In the end, there would only be one true victor. Debts needed to be paid, and they could only be paid in the loser's life.

The blood of those dearly-loved by both combatants – at the other's hands, no less – demanded it.

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_What Came To Pass III_

_Smoke filled the air from the bomb's explosion, clogging the senses and filling his lungs with its irritants. The urge to cough was building within him, but he didn't care. He heard the crackling of flames feeding greedily on the rubble strewn all around and on top of him, and knew the fires were close. The little cavity he lay in already held very little oxygen, but a tiny part of him – the only part that still thought about such things – knew that it would be more than enough to feed the flames into what would feel like an inferno to him when they caught him. The concrete slab that had fallen on top of his already battered body groaned ominously at the stresses laid upon it by the debris above it...but he didn't care._

_He didn't care that his lifeblood was slowly trickling out of him, that more of his bones were fracturing with every passing second as the concrete slab pressed upon him. The extra pain barely registered on his mental scale of just how bad it could get, as he had been through much more agonizing pain during his time with Nightwing. In fact, he could barely even bring himself to acknowledge the surprising fact that he was still (barely) alive after the bomb Nightwing had left for him. Not even the pain that stole his breath could penetrate the haze of apathy he sheltered under._

_They couldn't hurt him if he didn't care._

_If he didn't care how badly he hurt, how desperately he wished he was dead, then there was nothing the Bat and his brat could do to touch him anymore. They couldn't use the pain to get him to talk, to spill the secrets he literally guarded with his soul._

_So they had done the next best thing._

_So much of him had been stolen, broken, or simply shattered, that sometimes he had a half a mind to wonder why he was still left with the breath in his lungs. It was really the only thing Nightwing had left him with, and a part of him wished that it had been stolen from him too. He wouldn't even have objected that much if they'd managed to take his memories, but had left him with breath in his lungs. Perhaps then the knowledge of what had been done to him – by both the Bat-Clan and himself – could be buried and forgotten for all eternity._

_But together, the ability to breathe and the memories parading before his mind's eye, they were almost too much bear._

_For even if he did manage to survive the next few seconds, and all the seconds after that until someone came to rescue him, he would be forced to live with the reminders of what the Bats had accomplished, of the destruction that they'd wrought upon him in such a short time. From every day forth, day in and day out, he would have to live with the knowledge that they had succeeded in **his** aim: The Bat-Brat had destroyed him, and destroyed him well._

_Not even he recognized the stranger on the other side of the mirror, the person he had managed to catch glimpses of when the Bats weren't watching him. The facial structure was the same all right, and the features were those he could vaguely remember...but everything else was wrong. He no longer knew the personality behind the eyes, eyes so sad and despairing....so distorted and twisted from what he had once known that he had hurriedly turned his face away from them every time he'd glimpsed them._

_Lying there, barely hanging onto the slim thread of life left to him, his body broken and shattered beyond any hope of recovery, he looked back at his life up till now and was amazed that he was still trying so desperately to keep surviving despite all that had been done to him. He had made it so far, so long, so close to the end....and he wondered why he'd bothered, why he'd deluded himself into thinking he could hold his own against them._

_At least he didn't have to look far to know the reasons why. His memories told him that much._

_He had done it all to prove himself, to show to everyone (anyone, someone) that he was still the man he'd once been proud to be, to prove without doubt that his one moment of rage had not destroyed him as well as his lover. In so doing, he knew on some level that he'd been a very foolish man. What on earth had he been thinking? That suffering through the pain of the recent months made him more of a man? That he was capable of some kind of noble deed like keeping his mouth shut?_

_Who was he kidding?_

_He knew the truth now, for what good it did him with death so close. He could look back at what he had been, his mind able to see the events that had led up to this with a clarity he'd never before experienced – and probably never would again, all things considered. His memories continued their eternal advance, and for the first time he saw himself for the fraud he really was. Even before his capture by Nightwing, he'd known he was lying to himself, if only a subconscious level. Who was he to fly every night, to take to the sky on the wings of his mechanical eagle, to pretend he didn't notice the monster he had become from that moment on?_

_He'd been a fool to think no one had noticed the changes within him, that maybe if he'd kept himself busy he wouldn't have to notice either. Family, friends, colleagues and partners, they'd all seen the extra aggression in his actions, the merciless and relentless way he'd driven himself every day to keep from thinking...to prevent himself feeling the full impact of what he'd done._

_He'd been too blind to see what he was doing at the time, too wrapped up in his own grief to acknowledge the mess he'd become. But now, seconds from death and looking back on years of exactly the wrong kind of living, he could no more forget the way he'd brushed off the concerns of friends and family, ignoring their well-founded doubts and continuously assuring them that he was 'okay' with the past. And all the time, even as the words left his lips, he'd known the truth._

_He'd known the moment the rage had died away, the instant that he had realized exactly what he had done when he gave in to that dangerous and deadly emotion. It was then that he first knew the truth, when he first saw the shock and ... and repulsion in **her** eyes...those very same eyes he'd once longed to drown in, but now couldn't face._

_The comprehension of exactly what had been done had come too late...far too late to save her (him)._

_And he'd promptly denied it, denied what it was doing to him as soundly as he knew that everyone saw it within him. Nothing he could do would ever remove the unforgettable knowledge. He had crossed the line, and done the one thing he'd sworn he'd never do:_

'To love and to honour...  
And to Death do us part...' 

_The beautiful woman that he had loved with all his heart, the only one he had ever been truly close to, was dead by his hands. She had paid the price for his lack of control, paid it with the blood that was imbedded on his hands and in his heart. Blood had been the price of her freedom from the Bat, and she had paid it well._

_Too well._

_He'd never forget the look of eternal surprise in eyes once so soft and caring, of never-ending shock at what he had allowed himself to become in those final critical moments. He swore to himself he wouldn't (couldn't) forget. As grisly as the memory was, it was all that remained of her in him, all he had to keep his grip on whatever sanity was still left to him. He would willingly give everything he had – anything at all – just to spend one more moment with her, to bring her back and save them both._

_He had a fleeting moment of regret, lying there in the collapsed building and feeling his body slowly shutting down. He wished that it didn't have to be this way, that his life wasn't draining out of him with every thud of his flailing heart. He regretted deeply the choices that lead him right to this spot, leaving him with a broken body only held together by his skin, buried alive under the rubble from an explosion he'd had no right to survive._

_Yes, he had a lot of things to regret, many of them centred around the only girl of his heart. His soul ached to go back, to rewind the clock to that one pivotal moment and stop the finger that had slipped on the sweaty trigger and forced the gun to deliver its fatal cargo. But most of all, he wished he had never left her the night the living nightmare started, the night his life went to hell._

_The only person that had ever really mattered was dead because of him. The blood on his hands could never be wiped away by a few moments (months) of mental and physical torture and endless suffering. The taint on his soul would always remain from the day he had turned his own world upside down by deliberately and methodically killing another. That single second in which he had given his all to bring his opponent down...only to find he had been fighting the wrong thing, the gun-barrels pointing at the wrong targets. Nothing he could ever do would redeem himself, either in his own eyes or the one whom he had once loved with everything he was...and still did._

_Laying flat on his back in the rubble that all that was left of the building he'd been imprisoned in for so long, rubble that matched the desolation in his soul so perfectly, he had the sudden urge to laugh at it all. The irony of the situation appealed to him, in some twisted and perverted way._

_Here he was, filled with regret and endless pain over what he had done to others...and now it had been done back to him. By doing what they had, the Bat-Clan had actually been doing him a favour. He had certainly paid the price for that fleeting moment of inattention and rage._

_He had survived the unending months of torture that culminated in the unfathomable emptiness inside when he lost his hands. He had made it through the times he broke and apparently even the explosion they tried to kill him with. But surviving was not the same as living. Surviving was just existing from day to day and not planning for the future, except to know that what was to come would be exactly like the day he just survived._

_He had somehow survived it all, yes, but he was no longer living. Surviving, after all, meant he just had to keep himself breathing. To keep on living, he needed to enjoy every breath he took...and right now he hated it with all his heart._

_He no longer saw much point in life._

_'Life,' after all, meant more to him than just breathing and being alive. It meant knowing that he wasn't viewed as inferior being, like some kind of punching bag that they tolerated as long it continued bleeding. Life was the little things he treasured, like being able to go outside if he so wanted, of being able to kiss his woman when she smiled coyly, of loving and being loved in return. It was being with the one he loved and just being able to enjoy quality moments together. It was knowing that he belonged and that his feelings mattered to someone, somewhere._

_Life was Freedom; it was Hope._

_Life was Love._

_In that sense, at least, he had died on the very day the vigilantes first captured him. It was that day that he lost his freedom, that he lost the shining presence of his beloved. He had died the moment he saw the so-called hero standing before him in a blue-black suit after he had forced his way into what had seemed to be an abandoned building. The moment he saw exactly what the vigilante carried in his arms was the moment after which he slowly began to die, inch by painful inch._

_But a part of him said that no matter what price he paid, it wouldn't be enough. It couldn't be._

_He was already damned, already consigned to the worst of realities while still alive. For he was alive – for however long it lasted, at least – but he was already dead inside. He felt as if he was just waiting for Death to finally come and claim him from this earth, to give him the release he so desperately craved. It was the one thing he craved even more than the drugs, the one thing that would wipe away all his pain forever._

_Any release would do, really. Even if it only made the unceasing ache go away for even a few hours, it would be worth everything he would have to go through to get those precious few seconds of freedom. It would be worth every cent, even if he had to sacrifice his very humanity to get it._

_Not that there was much of him that was still human. Nightwing had seen to that. So if that little bit that was still human was his sacrifice to the burning need for release that filed his heart, then so be it. It wasn't like it was doing him much good right now anyway._

_There was a blood-debt he needed to pay, a debt that could only be paid in spilled blood. Whether it was his or someone else's, it honestly didn't matter to him right now. Blood was the price of his freedom, of his release from his torment. Someone had to be made to pay, to know the pain that he had to live with every day of his life, to know how it felt to live without any hands, to know what was like to not get the release he craved more than anything else._

_A ghost of a smile of bitter-satisfaction played upon his lips as he stared up at the stars so high above for what he somehow knew would be the final time. No matter how long it took him, or how much he had to give of himself to accomplish it, Justice would be served, and he would finally settle his debts with the grimmest of reapers._

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See? I can write action. It's just painful and seems to take forever. ;) Unfortunately, bad news is that university has started up again, so most of my juices are going into team reports and all that...once I can unpack the box in which my muse has apparently taken up residence. Ain't life grand?

Need I say that this is TBC? ;-)


	5. RoE: Running To Stand Still

_Additional Disclaimers:_ See first chapter for the essentials. I also don't own the names 'Jim', 'Char', 'Slea', or plays on 'JW' as these are based on the names/initials of a few of the writers whose stories I happen to enjoy. Consider this my little homage. Also, _'The Best Of Me'_ ain't mine and besides, I'm happy to let Ronan Keating and the companies keep it, cause I love it far too much. And until further notice, this story will be divided up into at least two (or more) 'acts' made up of a few scenes each, but no guarantees about the length of each act or scene. I need the flexibility right now. ;)

_Chap Summary:_ Who survived? Who are still fighting? What pieces are yet to be in place? ...And where on earth is Robin?

_A/N:_ The word _tol'she_ basically means 'one without honor', or 'one who breaks a promise or vow'. I know its German, but I'm not even sure if I spelt it right. Oh, and I'm also going to assume that DG's address be 1013 Parkthorn Avenue. (I think it's right this time.)

PS: I've made some elaborations to the chapter, as well as a whole new WCtP section. Its been swapped with the one in Chapter 6... :) Also, for the curious, I've included in this chapter the quote that effectively triggered the basic ideas on which I've hung this plot. See if you can find it. ;)

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**ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE**  
**Rules of Engagement**

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_**Chapter 5**_  
_**Running To Stand Still**_

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_Just like a ship without an ocean_  
_Like a sun without a sky_  
_You were the best of me..._  
_And since you're gone there's nothing left in me_  
_My love you were the best of me_  
_And when I close my eyes_  
_I see you there_  
The Best Of Me  
Ronan Keating

_Nothing endures but change._  
Heraclities

_A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies._  
Oscar Wilde

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Momentous events have a habit of sneaking up on us.

Within the blink of an eye, we can go from freedom to chains, from peace to war. In the space of one breath, one heartbeat, worlds have changed and entire civilisations have been lost. To paraphrase Dickens, all it takes is one moment, one memorable moment on a memorable day, and we are bound by chains, be they of gold or thorns. One single moment, be it deliberate or not, can be all it takes for our world to come crashing down around us.

The most recent Moments of Change had been devastating and all-encompassing for those involved. Nothing they had previously faced could ever compare to the power of these Moments. For Tim and Alfred, it was the moment they opened the cardboard box. For Barbara, it was the instant she accessed the file whose fingerprints she had just checked. For the Titans, their world had crashed around them during an early-morning meeting with Robin and Oracle. The foundations of Bruce's and Cassandra's worlds were rocked when they finally arrived 'home' from a prolonged undercover mission. And as for Joey, his life had fallen around him when he'd answered a knock on his door.

But life does not wait for the weary, and time marches on regardless of how many are injured or hurting. Yet another Moment was already playing out right now, and who knew how many more were waiting in the wings.

In Bludhaven on this starry night, it had taken one simple second to press 'Play' on a VCR...and the world was forever changed. There could be no return now to the peaceful past. No more could those involved return to the people, the individuals and personalities, they had been before that critical point had been breached. There is something about watching the painful and tortured death of a friend that changes one's perspective, that infects the dreams of the night and the memories of the past.

Nightwing had been brutally murdered.

Even if the public in general weren't yet aware of it, didn't know of what had gone down already this night, the world would never be the same again. One candle of brilliant light had been callously extinguished, and the universe would forever be a sadder and darker place for its loss. It might seem a presumptuous thing to say, perhaps even an exaggeration to the uncultured observer, but there was really no other way to explain the effect of what had occurred on the world.

Dick Grayson was dead.

Moreover, no one would ever know exactly (how) what had happened. For such was its nature that only a select few were actually present when the deed was done...and out of those present, only one of them would eventually emerge relatively unscathed from the entire sequence of events...amd would don the mantle of the Black Phoenix. Moreover, this one was entirely capable of keeping the details from everyone else, even himself if need be.

They say that secrets are deadly to those who know them.

This one was far worse.

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_Misty grey fog covering her in a suffocating shroud...  
Shadows full of shifting figures that never quite resolved themselves into people...  
Movement at the corner of her senses, but nothing there when she whirls to face it...  
Blood pumping in her veins with undeniable urgency...  
Flashes of light almost blinding in intensity...  
An unearthly scream of rage echoing in her ears, an unholy cry from everywhere and nowhere at once... _

Patches of clearing fog at the edges of her senses...  
Prone bodies lying around her...  
Blood flowing freely...  
Groaning and moaning figures, holding out withered limbs in pitiful entreaties...  
Shadowy faces resolving into faces of those she knew well...  
'I have to do something'_  
The fog crowding back in once more... _

Pumping fear  
Painful bursts  
Temper flaring  
Raging anger  
Lunging motions  
Shadows looming

Then pain so great, so intense, it swallowed up her soul and consumed everything she had until there was nothing left but the void of consciousness beckoning with the uncomfortable thought that she'd failed everyone—

"DDOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!"

Diana Prince, Amazonian princess and currently Wonder Woman, shot upright in bed, heart pounding, sweat making her thin, lacy nightgown stick to her clammy flesh while fear played an icy tune up and down her spine. Her sheets were twisted around her feet and her ebony hair lay limply in her round sapphire eyes as the strange and confusing images from the dream flashed before her mind's eye in quick succession.

_'Dream,'_ she thought to herself hazily, her body still working to get over the adrenaline burst. _'Only a dream.'_ She closed her eyes and forced her heart to calm, to bring the pounding under control and stamp down the unreasoning terror beating at the primitive centre of her brain. _'Just a dream.'_

It took her a few moments to slowly untangle her legs from the twisted sheets and swing her legs over the side of the bed, then a few more again to find her slippers and pad out of the bedroom into the living area of her small quarters in the Watchtower. She headed unerringly to the tiny kitchenette, her thoughts mainly focused on hot milk and chocolate – anything to soothe her still fluttering nerves. _'Then why in all graciousness did it feel so real?'_

Finally she was settled at the round wooden table that sat in the middle of what served as her dining room, holding in her hands a cup of warm milk with a couple of teaspoons of Jaffa-Lait chocolate to sweeten the mix. Only then did she allow her rational part free reign to examine her dream, struggling to isolate the 'whatever-it-was' in the half-sensed scenes seen in her sleep that had made her so sure it had been a message from her younger sister Donna Troy.

Well, technically, Donna was originally her magically-created double. However, a sorceress called Dark Angel had laid a curse on the girl to send her through a cascade of multiple lives, each ending in some kind of horrible tragedy. When the curse struck in this timeline, it had taken some fast thinking and even faster moving by the The Flash, Hippolyta – Diana's mother – and Diana herself to break the spell and restore Donna to the girl they had known and loved. Best of all, as far as Diana was concerned, the trials they had been through together had allowed Donna and Diana to share a psychic bond. There was always a warmth in the back of her mind now, a soothing arrangement of light and images and personality that had always grounded Diana and kept her sane, especially in her work as Wonder Woman. Her sister's presence was there, had always been there, comforting and worn like a much-loved blanket...

She sat bolt upright in alarm when she realised it was missing.

That part of her soul was as empty and barren as a devastated village after a raging inferno. It was an eerily familiar feeling that left shudders up and down her spine, for she knew instantly what it meant: she'd received the message from Donna as she took a blow intended to kill her. It had happened before, during some of the more intense mission The Titans had been on...but never with such intensity nor finality. Besides, when it had happened before, she'd managed to sense that there was backup on the scene...but this time she could feel no such thing from Donna, only some vague idea that Donna had been one of the last lines of defense against whatever it was that they were fighting.

Two minutes later, she was wearing her Wonder Woman uniform and impatiently stepping into one of the Watchtower's transporters.

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Roy Harper drifted quite reluctantly towards consciousness. His trained mind was unable to rest any longer, as much as he might currently wish otherwise.

It had been very nice to sleep undisturbed for once, and he still longed to go back. Unfortunately, someone or something had currently seemed quite determined that this harassed archer wasn't going to be getting any beauty sleep – and the record showed it was effective. First Robin gave him that shattering early-morning call that woke him up more quickly than even his daughter Lian could, then Wally was shaking him in "Doctor Fledermaus"'s apartment to get ready to attend the conference call with the Cave over the DNA results, and now his own brain betrayed him by not staying quiet. Actually, the only thought that registered was the grumbling demand to know one simple thing:

_'Why Me?'_

At first the answer escaped him, but as soon as he got close enough to consciousness to feel, he immediately understood in intimate detail why he was awake. He hurt. Every square inch of his body, from the very tips of his shock of red hair right down to the carefully-cut toenails, told him that whatever he'd been doing before he fell unconscious, he really shouldn't have done it. _'Hoo boy,'_ he thought to himself drowsily as he instinctively tried to roll away from the pain, _'that's the last time I let Lian choose takeout for tea.'_

"Easy does it, my friend. You do not want to hurt yourself even more, do you? Just take it easy."

The strangely familiar voice was soothing to his ears, calming battered nerves and easing desperate fears even as the hint of worry informed him that he wasn't out of the woods yet. The archer obediently lay quietly in response to the insistent pressure on his shoulders – and the agony the movement had caused that was currently shooting through his system – but found he couldn't quite relax fully as he turned over in his mind the concepts identified in the voice and struggled to work out why they worried him so much. He gave up on that soon enough when he found it only made his headache worse, and switched his brain over to trying to figure out the voice's identity.

_'Lian?'_ Nah, definitely not. Unless, that is, she was actually a grown-up male and he just hadn't been informed yet.

_'Batman then?'_ Nope. Too comforting for that. **Way** too comforting.

_'Wally?'_ No chance. The words had been spoken far too slowly for it to be the speedster.

_'Garth?'_ Yeah, that sounded right. Garth.

His conclusion firm in his mind, he carefully prised his eyes open to check. Big mistake. He groaned and grimaced at the pain lancing through his skull even as his eyes slammed shut, his photoreceptors working on overtime and leaving a painful after-image in his retinas that hurt almost as bad as the real thing. _'Sht. Concussed again. Do I have a bullseye on my head or something?'_

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Arsenal." came the same voice as before, this time with a (forced?) note of cheer. "You had me worried for a while there."

Roy only groaned again in response as the voice's words, relatively softly spoken though they were, seemed to echo in his ears. He made a mental note to push Garth Corin to the top of his Prank List when he was feeling like he hadn't just been run over by a fleet of semi's...that, or feeling like he'd been chasing after Lian on a forty-eight hour long sugar high. _'Whoever knew those little legs could go so fast...'_

The hero frowned and corralled his wandering thoughts. _'Yep. Definitely a concussion.'_ He cautiously opened his eyes again, this time employing a few (few dozen) Navaho techniques to taper the photosensitivity a little and help him handle the pounding of his skull. He managed to blink blearily a few times as he struggled to clear his sight enough to try and get some images that he could vaguely recognise.

Garth's smiling face – way too cheerful for the battered hero lying on the hard wooden floor – slowly swum into focus from its position to his side as Garth carefully placed a comforting hand on his teammate's shoulder. "At ease, Arsenal. You're still in Bludhaven at Nightwing's place. I wanted to make sure you could wake up before I tried to move you to Gotham's STAR Labs."

Roy tried to nod, and only managed to grimace. "Why...why STAR?" he managed, gritting his teeth to get the words out through a wave of pain crawling throughout his body but seeming to gather in burning clusters at his side, his shoulders, his torso, and his left leg. _'Damn. What on earth was I doing to get like this?'_

Even as sore and sorry as he was, there was no way Roy could've missed the slightly guarded look that came into his best friend's gaze, try as the Atlantean might to disguise it. "There was no way the Tower will have enough supplies to cope with your injuries and everyone else's, not after that Hykos Affair we just had. Besides, with the state you're in, you need better medical attention than I can provide."

Remembering not to nod in time, he grunted to show that he understood. "And...Donna? Wally?"

"They're fine," Garth answered quickly (too quickly?), recognising but not overtly commenting on his team-mate's priorities. "Donna and Wally are doing much better than you are right now. I woke you up first because you'll be the one to give a doctor the most cause for concern. As it stands, I almost lost you a few times already." His gaze, once clear and friendly, quickly turned sharp and pointed although his gentle tones never quite wavered. "Your condition scares me, my friend, especially with that gunshot wound you seemed to have thoroughly ignored."

Roy only grunted softly at the latter piece of information and ignored it as well – he was already too well aware that he'd been shot. He summoned enough strength to pin the Atlantean with a sharp stare, not quite able to shake the feeling that something was being hidden from him. It was a subtle undertone to his thoughts, a suspicion building within him that not all was as it seemed. It was something he couldn't quite put his finger on, but his instincts were screaming at him that this premonition would be very important in the near future. He frowned to hide his unease from his fellow Titan and asked about the remaining member of their group: "...Robin?"

Garth's gaze met his for barely a moment then quickly flicked away and dropped to the ground near the other's feet.

The pit of Roy's stomach immediately hit the floor as the dread certainty filled his heart that something terrible had indeed happened to someone he considered a friend, maybe even family...or maybe it was just the knowledge that a similar sense of dread had already been fulfilled once in the last twenty-four hours. His gaze never deviated from Garth's face, his mind full of the most recent events intermixed with everything his imagination supplied about what could possibly be so bad that it had even Garth rattled. "How is...he?" he demanded, his breath stolen from him at the last moment by a deep ache appearing in his chest with his exhalation. His hands curled into fists by his side as he struggled to wide out the latest wave and stay awake.

"Are you sure you really want to hear this?" Garth asked hesitantly, recalling the scene he had found in the warehouse when he'd arrived and not sure it was something he should inflict on his injured friend.

"Tell...me," Roy testily responded, his voice still hoarse but showing the unease he was increasingly feeling, matched only the pain still flowing throughout his body and the peace that was seductively calling him into unconsciousness.

Garth heaved a deep breath, gathering his strength to deliver the news that promised to hurt his friend. Then, in a quiet voice Roy had to strain to hear through the ringing in his ears, the Atlantean answered simply:

"He's gone. Robin's gone, and I have no idea how to find him again."

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World, meet Jim W. Slea, known as "Char" by his "associates" for his unparalleled pyromaniac streak as much as for the fiery temper and dry sarcastic wit that were his trademarks.

Char, meet World.

Born to parents he didn't remember, his earliest memories were of orphanages and the usual endless rounds of foster parents and the Juvenile Hall. Beatings, abuse, neglect, and drug-abuse made him run every couple they tried to give him to in favour of Bludhaven's gangs, but every time the system managed to sink their hooks into him once more and return him to Juvenile Hall.

But then, just after he turned nine, his latest foster-parents were gunned down in a drive-by-shooting that should never have happened. The social workers were at his address within minutes, as were the police thanks to an anonymous tip. It didn't take long for the suspicion to fall on him, even though he hadn't had anything to do with gangs for over a year. Unwilling to face either of the two angry groups, determined not to spend the rest of his life in Juvie or worse, he managed to slip away in the chaos and confusion, escaping into the night with little more than the clothes on his back, his shoes, and his dry sense of humour to keep him alive.

Ironically, perhaps, the known gang-bangers actually responsible for the hit were too high on a thousand amphetamines – personally supplied by Redhorn "on the quiet" in a small advance payment for the hit – to know that they'd transposed the middle pair of numbers in the address, hitting 1031 Parkthorn Avenue instead of their intended target.

They were found in Bludhaven's harbour with their heads facing the wrong way before there was even time for them to come down from their high.

Inevitably, as happened to all kids eking out an existence on Bludhaven's hard streets, the gangs intervened once more. He soon returned to running with his old friends at the Z-Senshi Gang. By the time he hit the age of ten, usually an innocent age for most children, he already had developed a criminal record longer than most serial crims, and it was filled with arrests – attempted arrests, anyway – for loitering, drug dealings, associating with known gang members, breaking and entering, stealing, and much more – not to mention more than one note about the boy possessing the martial arts skills of an adult more than twice his age.

On this particular night, he was supposed to be out foraging for enough food to feed the Z-Senshi's hungry brood of young kids. While he was out however, he had made the fateful decision to get back to the gang hideout via a warehouse they had been casing for a few weeks in preparation for a raid on the food supplies and weapons cache inside. All the time, he kept a weary eye and ear out for any members of the Buu Gang, whose territory he was inside by one building – the warehouse.

His quiet musings were interrupted when he suddenly slipped on the flat roof, the thin covering of fungus on the old stones of the roof making his footing treacherous and shifting beneath him before he was aware of it. He scrambled to regain his balance, his heart pounding in his throat until he was once again steady, firmly telling himself that he really hadn't heard a muffled thump of someone (something) landing on the roof while he was scrambling for purchase.

It was just his overactive imagination, heightened by knowing he was in another gang's territory...right?

His heart resumed its crazy beat faster than before, thumping madly against his throat while the blood vessels in his temples constricted as fear flared within him at the sudden heavy breathing he heard just on the other side of the vent he was hiding behind. Feeling all of his tender years, suddenly comprehending how badly he didn't want to die so young and forgetting all his training, he cowered behind the vent, imagining with every beat of his heart the strong hands of a Buu Gang member reaching around his little piece of shelter to tear him away and beat him up for being in their territory.

Little did Char know, the two beings advancing on him were far more lethal and dangerous than a few territorial rival gang-bangers.

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(Almost) Light against (Twisted) Dark.

The fast and furious battle was fought out between the two combatants far above the ground, passing from one rooftop to another without anything to mark its passage save for the inevitable grunts as some errant blow connected. Neither spoke, for to do so would almost certainly distract even a small part of their minds from the task of survival, and that small distraction would be all it took for their opponent to make that final fatal strike that would end it all.

It was, regardless of all else, a stalemate.

The two seemed to be at equal levels of ability – which is to say that they knew exactly where to hit to disable, disarm, or even kill, with one simple punch. But all it would take would be something small, something almost insignificant so as to be discounted under any other circumstances, and the battle would be tipped in one or the other's favour. There was certainly no way to tell who was winning or losing, apart from who seemed to block while the other was on the offensive at any one time. Both of them were thinking entire minutes ahead, a feat in itself when every move in this eternally deadly dance took under a second to land/block.

It was a stalemate of epic proportions, but still a stalemate.

It could only be said to be of epic proportions because, although the two were too concerned with spilling the other's blood to worry too much about the consequences, the outcome of this fight would – in part – determine the world's fate.

Light would win for the world safety, security, a hope of better times ahead, but also perhaps a thousand questions that would never be answered. While the darker one would be defeated, there would be left behind questions about his deeds that would never be answered and would gnaw eternally at the souls of the survivors. On the other hand, the triumph of Evil would leave in its wake a world shattered, broken, ruined and uninhabitable for generations to come...but at least some questions would (in a way) be answered. With the lighter combatant gone, there would be virtually nothing stopping the darker one from remaking the world as he saw fit and promptly doing to the other vigilantes what had already been done to another – thus answering, after a fashion, the questions of what had happened to Nightwing.

Both options had their own risks and attractions, their own drawbacks and advantages. To try to declare that one was 'better' than the other required rough estimates of the true 'worth' of all the drawbacks, an arbitrary choice fraught with many dangers and uncertainties.

Could Light leave the world broken and shattered for the sake of a few measly answers that might not turn out to be enough anyway? Or should the Light seek the good of the world, saving untold millions of lives even as it doomed itself to shining less brightly? Was satisfying the thirst for knowledge worth the lives of the world?

Perhaps, when it came down to it, it would depend simply on which option the world as a whole could "live with" more easily.

Unfortunately, the current situation certainly did not lend itself to allowing for definitive choices to be seen, of clear choices made between two totally distinct options, for it was quickly becoming apparent that, in the end, neither side could win this round. While opposite in nature they might be, they had much more in common than was apparent on the surface. This was a battle of true equals, of individuals with equal bloodlust and ferocity, each fighting for past wrongs and motivated by grief for what was lost.

Finally, after a seeming eternity of endless attacks, feints, and defenses, the two combatants parted as they landed on their latest rooftop, an unwilling separation brought on by something as simple as the need to draw in a breath without being tackled for it.

Panting hard, they drew back a few steps from the other, chests heaving in the chill of the night air as they struggled with limited success to regain a 'normal' heart rate and their composure. By chance or design, each of them stood in the shadows, the darkness wrapping like a cloak around them as they both glared dark looks at the other.

Then, out of nowhere, a stone rattled on the pavement to the left of where they stood on a rooftop somewhere in Bludhaven's industrial districts. The air was suddenly unnaturally still and thick with tension – as if some petrified observer had dislodged the small pebble by accident and was even now holding their breath and waiting for the inevitable discovery. In eerie unison, the two opponents snapped their heads in the direction of the stone's origin. At almost the same instant of time, they came to the conclusion that the sound had originated behind this particular rooftop's only air-conditioning fan and lunged towards it to discover its source – one to protect it, the other to destroy it.

As (bad) luck would have it, the darker one was marginally closer.

So it was that the Black Phoenix dragged Char from behind the vent. For all his experience and rough past, he seemed no more than a small boy barely over the age of nine with raven locks, startlingly clear shifting-teal eyes, wearing well-worn and ragged jeans and shirt under the distinctive black-leather overall of one of Bludhaven's numerous gangs.

Batman, the lighter-hearted of the two, could only freeze momentarily and stare in horrified recollection at the sight of the boy in the other's grip. Even in full PsychoBat mode, he couldn't bring himself to make any move to harm any child – no matter how 'un-innocent' his appearance – let alone one whose appearance so eerily matched a certain child of memory who had stolen his heart even as the child itself was also orphaned. For a long moment, the time rolled back and his memory merged with reality...

Unaware of the track of Batman's thoughts – for if he had known he would surely have exploited it with a few well-placed fists – Black Phoenix quickly wrapped an arm around the boy's throat, across the chest and under the boy's other arm. "Now back off _tol'she_, or the brat gets it," he snarled, a blade appearing in his hands quicker than thought from out of nowhere to be held dangerously close to the child's jugular – rather effectively keeping a normally energetic Char still and relatively silent, bar for the whimpers he couldn't keep down.

Batman's mind snapped back to reality at the scene before him almost before he realized where his mind travelled to, and he had to force himself to push the pain away to let the anger rush in, flowing through and settling his pounding heart, tensing muscles and narrowing eyes. He glared at his opponent, bringing the full brunt of his fury upon his opponent for feeling it necessary to threaten innocents, but also at himself for letting it get that far in the first place. He made no reply, his weighted cloak falling imposingly over his well-built frame and hiding the hand behind his back that was quietly palming a batarang.

Char, eyes wide and uncomprehending, was jerked roughly in the villain's hands, and the knife drifted even closer to his vulnerable throat. "I mean it, Bats," came the harsh snarl. "Drop the batarang you're palming, or the kid gets it."

To his credit, Batman made no visible reaction to the accuracy of his foe's perception...though he did allow the batarang to slip through his fingers, hiding a mental wince when it landed on the stone roof with a metallic clatter that, while barely audible, was more than enough to signal his compliance.

Black Phoenix smirked behind his protective mask, more than satisfied with the other's response but far too wary to start gloating yet. "That's it, Batty. Just stay outta my way and the kid won't test the law of gravity," he growled, edging closer to the edge of the roof, eyes flicking across to mentally 'eyeball' the distance between him and the edge behind the safety of the starlite lenses in his mask. _'Hmm. Just a little bit closer....'_

The sharp mind of the Bat missed neither the movement nor the insult, but chose to disregard only the latter. For that matter, he subtly adjusted his position to match the villain's movements – and this time made doubly-sure to hide the hand retrieving a small round ball from his belt.

Char gasped as the strong arm holding him firmly against the larger man's armour shifted slightly and tightened its grip, his little hands pulling on the muscular arms having as much effect as a gnat on a giant. His eyes darted around, futilely hoping to spot someone, anyone, anybody – he would even be happy to see two raging Buu-bangers right now – to rescue him from these two fearsome and nightmarish creatures.

Behind the mask, the villain's eyes narrowed as his mind calculated a hundred-and-one scenarios of how the standoff would end – most of them unpleasant and definitely not making his prospects of escaping another early funeral look any good. But a few of them of them could be rated from 'bearable' to 'okay'...and there was one in particular that was just what he needed...if he could just pull it off.

Now, he only had to figure out a way to end the standoff without paying a price that would cost him his soul all over again....

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_What Came To Pass V_

_It was her eyes that haunted him. _

Her eyes.... Oh where did he begin? Her eyes were perfect in every way, just because they were hers. He loved their every mood, their every glance and look. Those aquamarine seas of emotion would flash a stormy green when he used to stir her temper up, but would then soften to the clearest blue when they made up again. More often than not though, mischief and love would dance in her teal pupils, her gaze softening when it rested on him. Those eyes had been just like their owner, soothing him with their touch from even across the room when they were together. Just knowing she was there...knowing she was watching him with adoration shining in those perfect orbs...oh, how it used to make even the most hellish day like absolute flawlessness.

His clearest memory of them, however, was very different.

He saw them more often as they were at the end, when the life was all bled out and the sparkle had died an abrupt and painful death. Those once perfect orbs were glassy and frozen, holding him at a distance from any remnants of the soul that had flown the body's cage. The light and life that had for so long been the centre of his existence had disappeared like it had never been, vanished in one explosive second between Life and Death. Those eyes of the softest teal so ingrained in his memory were empty, yet were no less accussing for it.

And every time those perfect eyes appeared before him, it was all he could do to not shudder as through them he looked across the chasm between him and the love of his life. Deep within his own soul he felt the chill of the coldness of Death reaching out to take hold him, the freezing grasp of the end of life, and knew that the chill was there to stay. Nothing was ever going to breach the gulf between him and the kindred spirit that had once owned those eyes. What bridge there had been between them had been torn down and burned into ashes by his actions. They were once inseparable, but now...now they were separated...separated forever....

....And it was all his fault.

He'd realized that the moment he felt the gun buck as it discharged in his hands, the recoil hitting him like a hammer that pounded his arm and chest and then carried onto his temples only to burst in his heart. The moment he saw her body spasm and begin to fall as the bullet entered her chest and punctured the still-pumping heart, he could've sworn his own heart stopped too. Time had seemed to slow and stop for him as he stared in growing horror at what he had done, all the time hearing the infernal, cruel, mocking laughter of the crazed Nightwing vigilante that had began all of this.

His eyes locked with hers through the smoke from the gun, killer and victim, lover and loved. The utter terror flooding his senses overwhelmed his entire system and narrowed his world until all he knew were those perfect eyes, those shining orbs of softest teal that stared at him for an eternity.

She died with her eyes open...staring at him.

He saw it all within her eyes in that second that stood between their love and his current miserable existence. In those eyes, he saw what remained of their shared passion bloom and burst like an overfilled balloon put under too much pressure – their love had once been great, but not even it had been able to survive his betrayal. By pulling that trigger, he'd abandoned all he held dear and cherished for all those long nights. He'd failed her, he'd failed her trust in him to come and save her, and he'd failed the love they'd once shared.

And she knew...she had known it would end like that. He saw that in those teal eyes of hers. He saw growing in them the bitter-sweet justification of being proved right about him in the worst possible way. In those eyes were the shards of her faith in him and the thousand fragments of the love they'd freely given each other...until he'd pulled the trigger.

She had died knowing it was his fault...that he'd failed to save her....just as she'd sworn he would that fateful night when she'd kicked him out of their (her) apartment.

And she was right.

It had at first seemed just something that she'd said that night, just another missile she'd flung at him during their one major argument. She'd apologised, of course, told him it was just her grief for her dear sister so recently departed...that she hadn't meant a word of it nor everything else she'd thrown at him that night. And he'd just smiled and nodded and said nothing.

What was the point?

The bruises eventually faded. They always did. It had taken a lot of time, and a lot of aching, but they'd slowly faded, both internally and externally. He'd started smiling at her again and she'd started letting him hold her again. They'd touched, they'd talked, they'd just tried to be there for each other, to the point that a casual observer looking on would've thought they were just a couple happily in love and would never have known that there'd been an argument between them or how fragile their relationship had since become... because the scars had never faded. The scars always stayed, a constant reminder to him of what had passed between them that fateful night when they'd both lost their cool and had said far too much.

It wasn't like he'd been able to forget it anyway.

His memories were indelibly etched with the look on her face that night, the way her fine features had twisted with her hate for him and anger against all he'd represented to her. Not even the words, so harsh and pointed with the venom of a thousand taipans, could compare to that. And her eyes...her pretty teal eyes...so complete and perfect, and yet so angry, so twisted and distorted. He'd seen the truth that night, in those eyes. He'd seen her mask slip, had seen her true feelings that she harboured for him underneath the love she'd claimed to still feel.

All her rage, all her feelings of betrayal – oh, how he'd betrayed their love – and feelings of bitterness, of helplessness against the face of his indifference to her emotions and naive trust that she'd always be there, no matter how long he was away or what he'd said when he'd seen her last...all the anger that he'd caused her, all the hurt and painful love...

...It had all came out that night, on that porch.

And he couldn't forget it, couldn't let the memory die. He simply had not been able to forget it this time nor let the scars heal, like he had all the other relatively minor spats and arguments they'd had before that one. It had been, after all, only words. It had not altered their relationship, nor had been able to touch the love they bore the other. But this time, this argument...it had been all so different, it seemed.

He needed to remember how much he'd hurt her. He needed to recall so that he wouldn't do it again.

He'd tried to make it up to her. He really had. He'd shut out the world, pushed it all aside for her. He'd been as loving and as attentive as he could, striving always with all he was to right all his wrongs that he'd seen reflected in those teal eyes of hers. He had told her loved her, truly loved her like no one and nothing else ever could, and this time he knew he'd meant it. He'd bought her little gifts whenever he could, silly little gifts just because he was hers and because it made her smile, even if he knew it would be only for a while and until he looked away. He'd apologised too, apologised over and over and over again until she'd finally relented and smiled at him and told him he'd never really had anything to be sorry for as far she was concerned.

He'd smiled back at her and nodded again to accept her words...but then he'd realise how the smile she wore never quite seemed to make it to her eyes. So he'd kept on trying anyway, kept on trying to make up for all he'd done to her over the years.

And after that... He knew that she, at least, had managed to put aside what irritated her about him and had settled on loving the things about him that had originally drawn her to him. She was too good to hold a grudge after she'd told him how she felt. For her, it really was the end of the matter,

But he...he couldn't quite put it aside, even after she'd forgiven him. He'd tried – Gods, he'd tried so hard – to recapture his old feelings of blissful love, of a love that swept everything else in its path aside. He'd worked hard on their relationship, trying to recapture what they'd once had before that argument. But all he did was like trying to capture the rain in a leaking pail, like covering a fatal, gushing wound with a tiny band-aid.

While the bruises might have faded and the scars had covered the top of the wounds, still he felt himself bleeding deep inside, where no one else could see it nor feel it. The wounds inflicted that night cut him deeply every day since, deep inside his heart, down where he knew she never saw. He'd been able to make sure of that, at least, that she never knew how deeply he ached. It was all buried so deep within him that even he sometimes managed to forget the wounds were there for a few minutes, that he managed for an hour or so to ignore how much it hurt to know that she thought he'd one day abandon her at the very moment she would need him the most.

She'd damned him for it, for the time when she knew he wouldn't save her, that night when she threw him out...and she was right. She was right.

He pulled the trigger...then did nothing.

He made no move to comfort her, to ease those final few moments as her lifeblood bled out onto the cold cement floor. He couldn't save her when she needed saving, couldn't leap to her defense when she was at her most vulnerable, couldn't go that little bit extra distance he needed to go to save her...to save her from himself.

Instead, he might as well have been a mighty oak tree with roots thousands of years old for all the movement he could make. He couldn't move, couldn't shake himself out of his shock. All he could do was stand there, horrified by what he'd done even as he wondered dazily how it had ever been allowed to happen. All he could do was stare at her without moving as she died at his feet...and all he ever saw was those eyes, all he ever felt was her pain.

Even now, who knew how many days later, it was all he knew. It was all he'd ever know. Her frozen gaze was with him day and night, with every hour that passed and with every step he ran to get away. He felt it in both waking and sleeping, in dreams and in daylight. Whenever and wherever he turned, those eyes were there, watching him...forever staring at him...eternally accusing with their gaze and damning him for all eternity.

She was right to damn him. She was right all along.

He was damned.

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Forty stories up and a couple of kilometres deep into Bludhaven's faltering industrial districts, the tense stand-off between the Black Phoenix and the Dark Knight was inexorably coming to its own conclusion.

Batman watched his foe closely, mirroring the smallest movement closer to the edge of the roof that the other made, his mind racing to come up with a plan to save the terrified child in the villain's grasp. The increasing whimpers the boy made as the knife nicked lightly the vulnerable flesh of his neck echoed in Batman's mind, each of them a damning blade thrust at him that mocked his inability to save the ones that truly mattered. He wasn't going to fail this boy like he'd failed D— He growled deep in his throat and refocused his attention, pushing the pain away and channelling what he could into anger.

But the entire time the Dark Knight was subconsciously aware of something...something dark and mysterious that he could just manage to sense but couldn't quite put his finger on...something that hovered in the air between them like an invisible danger sign in flashing neon. What it was and what it meant for the future, he couldn't exactly say, but he did know it was there – how he did so, he didn't know any more than he could shed his cape and fly to the moon on his own power like Kal'El aka Superman. He felt it, and it undermined him with every beat of his heart, building within him a superstitious fear that this was one fight he would not win and should not want to win.

And so he did the only thing he could do: he glared at his opponent from behind the cowl and followed his foe's every moment as the other inched towards the edge of the roof. He hoped beyond hope to find an opportunity to use his palmed metallic ball even as he used all the control he'd ever had to keep both the metal ball and his unease at the standoff hidden, to only show to the world the cold and calculating visage of a (Psycho)Bat with a mission.

Even so, they were two lions circling each other, the smell of the rival's blood thick in their nostrils and stirring the adrenaline and urging them on even as wariness and survival instincts held them back. Each of them had discovered in their just-adjourned sparring the other's ability to take advantage of a presumptuous attack, to turn a badly timed move into victory, and lessons so recently learned were hard to put aside. Besides, it was a classic stand-off out of some cheesy old-style western, and the tension was as hard to break as it was to orignally watch.

In the end, it was the Black Phoenix who made the final definitive move, at last fed up with the way Batman stalked his every move. He froze and seemed to stare for the moment at the child in his arms then quickly looked back at the Bat with a small slump visible in his shoulders. He made a deliberate effort to look like he was giving up – or at the very least reconsidering his course of action – even as he subtly adjusted his grip on the knife held to Char's throat and struggled to hide his growing smirk from showing in his voice as he mumbled, "Oh, fine then. If you want the brat so much, come and get him."

Char allowed himself to relax infinitesimally, hoping that this meant he was going to be freed, so that he could get away from this crazy standoff. His whimpers died in volume and he couldn't help but fidget in what little freedom of movement he still had, anxious to get away and far from here, to find the comfort that his 'family' of the Z-Senshi Gang would offer him when he told them of this night's adventures.

As coincidence would have it, at that precise moment the moon just now starting to be glimpsed over the city's roofs was covered with a heavy cloud that drifted across and obscured its face from view, its light shielded from the world and throwing the rooftop into the dim light from the stars. All at once, things started to happen, too blindingly fast for little Char to follow but all too slowly for the older ones, for the two modern-day owners of the night.

The very instant the darkness shrouded the rooftop, Batman threw down the small ball he had picked out only a few moments ago, thankful he'd had the foresight to get it ready in advance. It fell towards the ground with remarkable speed considering its size – due more than a little to the lead shell protecting the contents.

But would it be enough to save the boy?

Swifter then thought, faster than the eye could follow, the Phoenix flicked his wrist quickly, expertly sending his dagger spinning through the air towards the ground near his hated foe. As soon as the knife left his hands, he moved his right foot behind him, intending to take a step or two back to put himself just that little bit further out of Batman's striking range.

The Bat-ball hit the ground and immediately cracked open with a barely audible hissing noise, expelling far more smoke into the air than seemed possible for the tiny gizmo to contain. The greyish gas billowed upwards and outwards, a thick cancer of the air that obscured all lines-of-sight that passed through it, almost immediately reaching knee-height and not looking to stop there as it clamoured for the stars. Batman dropped swiftly into a crouch and rocked back on his heels, intentionally using the smoke as a screen to protect himself as he launched himself at his foe, hoping that it would hide him long enough to stop his foe from carrying out his implied threat to dump the kid over the edge. Just because the villan had moments before been giving up was no reason to relax his efforts.

The knife twisted and spun as it hurled itself through the air, a soundless and thoughtless messenger of death and pain. Thrown with deadly accuracy and with all of the Phoenix's weight, it landed at the exact spot on the roof that the Phoenix had aimed at, even if it cannot be said that he could never have planned for it to land in the way it did.

Batman's cape had curled around him, flowing out onto the rooftop as he had dropped into his crouch like dark water moving seamlessly over rocks and rapids with barely a ripple to disturb its flow. It was into a fold of this cape that the knife landed, somehow passing with unusual ease through a couple of folds of the tightly woven Kevlar cape and hitting the stones of the roof with an almost negligible decrease of speed.

Black Phoenix, more than a little surprised he had thrown the knife so well; he'd only expected to make the Bat flinch a little (if he could) when it landed millimetres from his booted feet, not pass through that damned cloak. Nevertheless he had no delusions that his little trick would stop the Bat for anything more than a second as he completed his first backwards step and started another. He knew better than almost anyone else that it was highly unlikely for the knife to find the relatively softer mortar between the hard stones, and even then that it was almost impossible for it to penetrate far enough to keep the Batman in one place for anything near the couple of seconds he really needed to carry out his plan. In this game of wits and dare-and-double-dare, even the half-second that he did have was going to have to be enough.

The knife, as expected, hit a particularly hard stone and rebounded, although it did leave a long scratch along the stone for its efforts. It certainly did nothing in itself to pin the Batman to his place, although the pulling motion on his cape did slightly counteract Batman's forward motion as he tried to launch himself forward, the unexpected force just enough to upset his finely-tuned balance and jerk his shoulders back even as his legs pushed off the roof surface.

He recovered almost immediately, adjusting his momentum and speed to account for the slight drag, as always making the best of even the worst situation. The sound of the heavy material of his cape ripping filled the air as it tore from the strain he placed upon it, this time prepared for the sudden release and ready to use it to slingshot himself forward even faster.

But by the time he was free, the Phoenix was already standing on the very edge of the roof, both heels over the edge but with one foot raised slightly as if to step forward. He was still holding the kid in front of him as a human shield...but now he was without the knife now buried in the stone and mortar, and thus had nothing to hold to the kid's throat and thus hold the Bat at bay.

For a too-brief moment, Batman thought he might actually have a chance to save a life, that he wouldn't have to relive this moment in his dreams for days to come, that he could keep his parents resting easy with his never-ending pursuit for justice. His legs pounded the paved roof, adrenaline pumping and his tarnished soul taking flight with the thrill of the chase. He grabbed for his grapple launcher – ready to use it to snare the child if push came to shove – even as he reached out with the other, hoping beyond hope to pluck the child from the arms of the demented villain and immediately swing them both to safety.

Then the villain's hidden smirk widened into a full-fledged grin as he calmly stepped back into the void when Batman was still well over one metre away, his arms reflexively tightening his grip on the terrified child in his arms as he allowed himself to fall.

Without a moment of hesitation, Batman followed merely a second behind them. But would his (hopefully greater) weight be enough to let him catch up to the armoured murderer and the terrified child? Would gravity finally work in his favour?

The two dark shapes plummeted through the night air with an inevitable gathering of speed that heralded the sudden deceleration at the end that would kill them when they landed...unless they found something akin to a miracle – or a grappling line – to save themselves in the meantime.

For the first few terrifying moments, it was hard to be sure of anything except the uncomfortable nearness of the pavement rushing up to meet them like a mag-lev train on steroids and without brakes. Windows flashed past Batman faster and faster, a blur of intermittent light-and-dark squares causing what seemed to be a flickering light to play off the Phoenix's strange metallic costume of the shifting colours.

Quickly shifting his body into a position commonly called the 'swan-dive', Batman mentally pressed himself to fall faster, the hand not holding the launcher desperately reaching out for anything of the child to grab onto. And all the while the point of no return, the point when he'd have to fire his grapple launcher or else become a bloody-red-black smear on the pavement, advanced ever closer.

With the grim certainty of one who cannot see even a tiny glimmer of light in a dark world, the confidence born of the terror of facing certain death, Char did not scream – he had no air available to do so – but struggled to break free of the chokehold around his neck, reaching up thin little arms of his own to the Bat with desperate hope shining in those tremulous blue eyes. Even the spectre of the Bat was more appealing to this child's mind than one that would willingly plunge towards death.

Black Phoenix growled angrily and tightened his grip on the writhing imp in his arms, concentrating hard and impatiently focusing his mind on the small patch of shadow that began about five stories up and ended almost at the ground. _'Come on, come on...just a little bit further...only fifteen stories to go...'_

Batman was concentrating too, focusing his all on gaining just a little bit more air relative to the other. Already it seemed as if he only had to stretch just a little bit longer to reach the kid...just a little bit more....

Heart pounding in terror and fear, Char's struggles gained strength as if he sensed death growing ever closer from not just the approaching pavement but also the vise-like grip around his neck.

Finally, after what had to surely be an eternity, Batman felt his hands close around something...something that turned out to be the leg of the Phoenix. He grunted to himself as he tightened his grip with all his strength and readied himself to fire his launcher, more than willing to risk the extra weight that could well exceed the grappling gun's specifications – never mind those of his shoulder – and the inherent danger in saving his nemesis for the chance to save the child. Already at what he estimated was ten stories above the ground, he had to fire the launcher within the next second if he wanted to avoid becoming a pancake.

The Phoenix looked up as he felt the tight grip enclose itself around his ankle and growled heavily in his throat. _'No! I'm too close!'_ The dark patch of night he was aiming for was almost within arm's reach, tantalisingly close but he knew all too well that it might as well have been as far away as the moon if he couldn't get rid of the Bat. He brought his foot back and kicked the hand holding his ankle, but the awkward position he was falling in and the wriggling child gripped tightly in his arms prevented him from giving it as much strength as he would've liked, only managing to dislodge the other by a few millimetres.

Knowing the flailing attacks to be born of desperation, Batman fired his launcher at the closest streetlamp and was satisfied to see the weighted Bat-hook at the end securely wrap itself around it a couple of times. He grunted to himself as the line caught and began to bear his weight, only having time to hope his shoulder and the line could take the added strain and that he hadn't made a mistake in his calculations while he began the inevitable arc around the lamp-post, dragging the other two with him.

His heart in his throat – in more ways than one – the Phoenix kicked out again with all his strength, this time succeeding in bashing the fingers from the side instead of trying-and-failing to push them off his ankle.

Batman's hands reflexively loosened slightly before he could stop himself, and the Phoenix quickly yanked his foot free and arched his back as he entered unimpeded into the shadow he'd been aiming for, the boy still held securely in his strong arms...and disappeared into the shadows.

And so it was that, hands empty, Batman helplessly arced across the street, his body getting no closer to that dark patch than half a meter as the jumpline carried him to relative safety.

And then the boy's terrified screams were cut-off.

Hanging onto the grappling line for dear life as his momentum threw him through one great big arc, Batman could do nothing to stop it. It was not the first time in his life that he had felt helpless, nor the first time he'd felt it in a situation involving a boy with startlingly blue eyes, but the losses of the last few hours amplified the regrets and self-crimination. He had allowed his emotions to prevent him saving his son...and now he had failed at what had felt like a second-chance to preserve another set of shining blue eyes through one more night. He'd failed twice over, and it hurt all the more because of it.

Finally, after what surely had to be an eternity of helplessly swinging, he managed to let go of the line and throw his body onto the roof of a nearby building he had instinctively been aiming for, rolling and tumbling for a few meters to quickly bleed off excess momentum. He quickly sprung back up on his feet and turned back to rush to the edge, his heart in his throat and thudding dully in fear for the child, expecting to find a sorry and sad tangled mash of shattered bodies on the ground so far below ever since he'd heard the boy's cut-off scream.

To his momentary flush of relief, there was nothing of the sort to see when he leaned over the ledge. Almost immediately, however, the relief rushed out of him as quickly as it had arrived with the age-old rage flowing in to replace it, making him scowl heavily and slam his fist in angry frustration against the parapet in tandem with a few vicious expletives. There was nothing below the building's roof.

The villain and his hostage had melted into the night as if they'd never been.

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The Metropolis apartment was quite and still, the elemental peace that comes with unworried sleep having fallen over its inhabiting couple. All seemed as it should, nothing out of place and all things where they were supposed to be...and then the unmistakable sound of a fingernail tapping on glass invaded this scene of a happy couple's bliss.

One clear blue eye snapped open, its depths unclouded by the cobwebs of sleep. Its owner slipped out of between the sheets immediately without waking the bed's other occupant, and padded with silent feet on plush carpet towards the dining room where the sound had originated. He picked up no weapons on his way, confident in his own abilities to deter the would-be intruder from robbing his household.

He made it no further past the doorway of his bedroom, his sharp eyes picking out the form hovering outside the window. He turned his back on it immediately with obvious disregard for any danger to return to the bedroom. Ninety seconds and one worried wife later, Clark Kent met with Wonder Woman on the roof of his apartment building.

He stepped with apparent calm into the open, his sharp eyes fixed on his teammate even in the dimness that surrounded them. "Diana?" he called softly, his commanding voice carefully modulated not to carry too far and softened by the concern shining in his eyes.

"Clark? Thank God its you." She turned to face him, the lights from the surrounding cityscapes reflecting off the tears gathering in her eyes. The proud and fierce Amazon that she commonly presented to the world was gone, in its place standing a scared young woman with hunched shoulders, as if she bore the weight of all worlds on her soul.

Her teammate closed the few metres separating them, his kindly nature immediately touched by the unbridled worry in her voice. "Diana?" He placed his hands on her shoulders, a small part of him alarmed by this dramatic departure from the normally calm and composed Princess he was so familiar with. "What's wrong?"

Deep blue eyes stared back at him, momentarily closing as if she struggled to regain what threads were left of her composure, reaching deep inside herself to summon extraordinary strength. Her eyes flicked open again, and he was struck by the certain wild calm dwelling within them, a fragile cover of turmoil, like a bright tablecloth hastily thrown over a battered table slowly falling apart. When she spoke, her voice had lost its former panicked edge, but the frustration and fear could still be heard underneath the false calm. "Clark, my dear friend, please, tell me you know where Donna is. I need to find her."

He frowned and unconsciously stepped back, his mind considering the matter with its usual inhuman speed. "Have you tried the Titans Tower?"

She nodded, her brows worriedly drawing together for a moment before she managed to smooth them out again. "They haven't heard from her for a couple of days. Even Robin indicated he was having trouble finding her when he called the Tower to ask about her last night. They haven't heard from him since then either."

His frown deepened and he started pacing in a tight circle, firing questions at her as he walked. "What about the other original Titans? Did the Tower know where they are?"

She shook her head, frustration showing clearly in her expression. "That is where it becomes a little crazy. Argent informed me that Robin indicated at the time that he was also looking for The Flash and Tempest, but that he didn't care to say why. They weren't too sure where those two are either."

"What about Arsenal?" he shot back.

"He is supposed to be working quite hard in New York, but he has so far missed his regular check-in time by an hour or so," she replied promptly, then paused to look at him strangely. "But what on all Themyscira does this have to do with my Donna?"

His pacing slowed, his face revealing some internal struggle for a bare moment before it cleared, apparently coming to a decision that had been hard to come to terms with. He turned to face her, his expression one of grim determination. "Hopefully, nothing," he replied. "But we'd better check with Oracle just in case." He turned back to the door leading off the roof, intending to return to his apartment to retrieve his JLA communicator.

Diana stepped forward and plucked his sleeve, the quiet fear flowing through her veins not quite overcoming the fierce strength burning within her gaze, stopping him in his tracks as much as did that famous Amazonian strength. "In the name of our friendship, tell me what's going on here." she entreated quietly, her tense but passionate words as effective as an epic speech on morality and highest ethics.

"I'm hoping it's nothing," the alien hero replied grimly, his face shuttered and closed to her for the very first time in her memory. "If we're lucky, it'll be just Robin checking up on everyone."

She heard quite clearly what he left unsaid, and so prompted, "Or..."

"Or," he supplied, his grim expression darkening with unease, "it's the worse-case scenario. Either Batman's come back more psychotic then usual and he's calling in reinforcements to deal with him, or there's been some kind of development in the endless search for Nightwing." He shook his head, the worry for his surrogate nephew bursting forth for a moment until he brought it back under strict control. "But like I said, if we're lucky it'll be nothing more major than Robin with the latest schedule for watching Bludhaven."

His bit said, he turned back and quickly walked to the rooftop door leading back inside, entering and descending without anymore words. She followed him down barely a step behind him, her movements as quiet as his as she took the time to digest what he had told her. And the disquieting feelings inside her only mounted with every second that passed with their bond remaining as cold and still as a proverbial graveyard.

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The Wayne Manor stood upon its hill, seeming to appear drawn and aloof from the night's events even if its inhabitants were not. It was a house whose origins dated far back into the Wayne's generations, even if the materials it was now built of were only dated after No Man's Land. Not even those earth-shaking events could remove from this house the memories, the thoughts and aspirations of generations past, the happy times and sweet laughter of a child's birth, first steps into the unknown, and all the family gatherings. Not even being swallowed up by the ground could ever remove from these silent, stoic walls the stains of centuries of funerals, of weeping goodbyes and the shocking pain of loss.

There were things that not even death could remove.

Alfred Pennyworth, for instance, could not that easily forget the shining eyes, the happy laugh of a child growing up all too soon, the innocent smile of a world-wise Robin, the tumbling black locks that were a magnet to being ruffled by Master Bruce's hands. He could not let die the memories of the child with the wise eyes hiding behind a brilliant smile, the recollections of achievements and failures of a youth growing up in two hostile worlds, a child caught between two vastly different worlds of the circus and then the life of a vigilante. Not even the tears could pass unmourned into the night, nor could he allow the times of comfort and sympathetic pain to evaporate as if they had never been just because Death had decided to visit him and his unusual "family" once more.

To do that, to forget all that had been and could be, would be worse than the Death itself. He knew better than most that the death of a loved one brought pain and grief, and all the dark places that grief could bring a person. But he also knew the happier times it brought as well further down the years, the times when he'd look back with a wistful smile and remembered tears of reflective longing in the corners of his eyes. To push the painful past away in the short-term was to lose out in the long term, and somehow seemed to him to be a way of dying all over again. It was losing everything twice over, but this time for both himself and the one he had lost. To not be remembered...that was truly Death.

How did Shakespear put it? It was in the play of Julius Caesar, a play of betrayal and dark deeds. It was Marc Antony that said it: "To die is to become a blank canvas." And now Alfred knew what he meant. Death, the passing away of life, truly occurred when one was forgotten, when the record (picture) of their deeds and the memory of their personality faded and dimed with time, when there was no one to remember everything that made that person unique. That certainly had to be when they were gone, when their candle of life was genuinely extinguished.

The kindly old man blinked heavily, shaking his head slightly to let such melancholy thoughts pass. Philosophy and literature, for all it helped him to understand the greater picture, kind of withered in the harsh lights of Reality. A quiet sigh – filled with more emotion than this world is with garbage – escaped his lips into the night as he began rubbing down this room's mantelpiece for about the sixth time in twice as many minutes.

He went through the quiet motions, finding his own special kind of therapy in the task of making sure the Manor was clean and respectable. More often than not, such a task had calmed his shot nerves after many a long night of waiting anxiously for the Masters' returns, be it injured or whole, from another night of patrolling, of beating up criminals and getting beat up themselves.

Tonight, though, seemed to be a night where none of his usual 'therapies' were having the desired effects. He had worked tirelessly all night so far, polishing floors and dusting the furniture, mopping and sweeping and vacuuming until his knees almost ached and his feet were sore from standing so long and doing too much in too short a time. And still his thoughts swirled inside his mind, flying around hither and thither as if a typhoon was blowing his mind apart.

_'The young Master's gone...'_

He finished the coffee table with a flourish even as he discreetly turned slightly from the room's only other occupant to hide the motion of dabbing at the corners of his eyes. Hiding his reactions was an action born of long habit, even if he did kind of doubt Mistress Cassandra would have noticed it if he even burst out into a sobbing fit here and now.

The young warrior sat at the window seat of the lounge-room, staring out at the darkened landscape, seemingly mesmerised by her own reflection in the glass – the only thing visible to the eyes with the light on. He'd been bustling around this room – in a fashion – as he cleaned it for over twenty minutes now, and he had yet to see her move. With Cassandra, it wasn't normally something he worried about. But this was the first time she had been above the 'basement' in months...and every other time she'd been above, she'd always been more concerned with what was happening inside the Manor than watching herself or in what little could be gleaned of the outside at this time at night.

He sighed again and returned to the task of cleaning, knowing it was best to leave her be, to let her adjust in her own time, at her own pace. That decided, the elderly gentleman drifted gracefully out of the dining room with more than one concerned backward glance.

Cassandra exhaled softly as she finally heard him leave. _'Finally. I thought he'd never leave...'_

Always silent, she carefully uncurled her legs and stood, frowning unhappily at the pins and needles afflicting her limbs from the returning circulation, from sitting still in the wrong position for a little too long. Mentally she shrugged it off and made her legs take her to the doorway with traces of her old grace, pausing there for one last glance into the room before, for all intents and purposes, she followed Alfred out of the room.

Once she was out of sight of the doorway, she said simply into the air, "Foyer dining lights off." The darkness fell swiftly, hiding her lithe body from sight as she stealthily snuck back into the room she had just left.

Maybe if _they_ thought she'd left, whoever was watching the Manor could be coerced to reveal themselves. And until they did, she would keep watch from the window. Normally she would've kept watch from the Cave, but the 'basement level' contained too many fresh memories for her to face it right now. Besides, her instincts said that whoever was watching would attack the Manor, not the Cave, and she also knew that this particular window would provide all of the vistas she needed. She couldn't say exactly how she knew this – she wasn't sure where these instincts came from except to say that they had never once failed her before.

Something was going to happen soon.

There was something in the air, in the water, in the blood running through her veins, the breeze on the hairs of her neck, the angel/voice/devil in her ear, that whispered to her of momentous happenings waiting just around the corner. With every second that passed, she could almost feel it tensing its muscles in preparation to strike, filling with the air with an electric tension that made her blood flow faster and her heart beat stronger with anticipation.

A small smirk flittered across her face for barely an instant as she began deliberately stretching to warm up her muscles and enjoy the heady sense of anticipation flooding her veins. The sooner _they_ came, the sooner she could work off some of this frustration and anger.

Thankfully – depending on how you look at it – it wasn't to be long until her instincts proved themselves right once more and the shadows would descend on the Wayne Manor.

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The two JLA members made the call high above the mountains to the east of the great city of Metropolis, one of the few places they could be confident they wouldn't be overheard in any way, shape, or form. Clark, now in his Superman uniform, dialled the memorised number while Diana, now dressed as Wonder Woman, kept an anxious ear and eye out for any one or thing that didn't belong and the other ear and eye on the official JLA communicator.

There was a moment of static as the comm made the connected on the secure line, the static signalling the high-tech encryption systems coming online.

Slightly distorted by the tinny speaker but still with remarkable clarity, Oracle's voice came floating over the connection. "You've reached the all-knowing Oracle. What's up, Supes?"

"Oracle," he answered, carefully choosing his words as he knew that alarming either woman with an unthought word or phrase was the last thing he needed, "I was wondering if you knew where Donna is. Diana's trying to contact her..." he trailed off meaningfully.

On the other end of the line, Babara stifled a sigh. She'd known this would be coming for quite some time now. At least now she'd been warned that Superman had company listening in. _'Okay, my girl, time to see how convincing you can be.'_ "Remember who you're talking to? I'm the Oracle. Tell me what its about, and I'll see if I can pass it on," she replied quietly, managing (somehow) to keep her voice steady. _'I wonder if this'll get me an Oscar.'_

Superman glanced up at Wonder Woman quickly, then just as quickly schooled his face into impassiveness and tore his gaze back down at the communicator's tiny little screen that only showed him Oracle's electronically distorted face. That opening phrase had been a code-phrase they'd privately agreed upon all those months ago in the first few days after Nightwing's disappearance, telling him that something bad was happening even as they spoke.

Damn. So much for the Titan's disappearance being something as simple as the latest roster of heroes to watch over Bludhaven. _'Why can't anything be simple anymore?'_

Thankfully from his point of view, Diana chose that moment to speak her piece. "Oracle, please, I need to know she's okay. I can't feel her anymore, and the last thing she transmitted to me wasn't very comforting. Just tell me where you think she is, and I'll take it from there."

Babs swiftly and silently cursed her own thoughtlessness. In all the stress of the last day or so, she'd allowed herself to forget entirely about that psychic bond the two sisters shared. The question was, now that they suspected something was up, did she have the right to hide the truth? Did she have the right to keep from them something they should've known hours ago, even tho' she knew that Batman would not approve of them knowing? Control freak that thw Batman was, Clark was as close as a brother to Bruce as anyone could get, let alone acting as a very understanding uncle for his eldest surrogate son...and Diana, Babs knew, was one of the few JLA members for which Batman had more than one shred of respect for – she could count those people on one hand and still have most of her digits left over. She didn't know of anyone else who deserved to know what she suspected with increasing dreadful certainty as much as did this two...but could she really tell them without falling apart all over again? Or did she dare to face their righteous anger when they later found out she'd lied to them?

She was silent for a long moment, her mind racing as she mentally debated it, her thoughts tipping back and forth like an endless seesaw.

Taking the drawn-out silence to be the thoughtful silence of the computer genius racking her reputedly-photographic memory for any trace of her missing sister, Diana continued to plead with an eerily regal calm woven in her voice to hide the growing hollowness inside her soul, "Please, Oracle, tell me whatever you can. I just need to know my sister's all right, and then I won't bother you again. Please, just tell me—"

For better or worse, Oracle came to her decision. "Last I knew, she was in Bludhaven working on an assignment for me," she interrupted, a grim tone edging slowly into her voice. "Get going, and I'll fill you in on the way." Taking a deep breath, pleading mentally for strength from whatever or whoever was listening, she plunged right into the unhappy tale without giving herself too much of a chance for second thoughts. "It started over twenty-seven hours ago when the Bat signal was lit real early..."

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The night was young, the stars just beginning to shine, and the light from the waxing moon shining through his window did little to prevent him seeing the stars' brilliance spilling across the sky and hinting at the ancient story of the universe in a night that was already feeling old itself. Honour had been laid on the line, depths of devotion plumbed, friendships strained, and, worst of all, a father's undying love had been tested. And, he saw with a glance at the clock, that was all before eight-thirty pm too.

His mama once told him there'd be nights like this.

Joey Flaherty remembered scoffing in his mind at the time, his childish mind then finding impossible to believe that life could ever go so drastically **wrong** in so short a time. But as an adult, he'd seen the truth of her words in far too many ways...first the night when he lost his brother, then with that nutter calling himself Charon, and now this.

Standing at the bay window, staring out into the moonlit night and the artificially lit city, he distantly heard himself heave a sigh from the bottom of his soul. _'How could everything go so wrong so fast?'_ He stared out into the sea of back, not caring one bit that the internal light of the house prevented him from seeing anything outside. He was more concerned with the seemingly endless struggle to get his thoughts in order to notice, his mind a morass of hundreds of bittersweet memories and a thousand regrets that he couldn't bear to turn away from in the nameless fear that if he dared to, he would lose it all over again.

Was it really only this morning that he had bid his family good-bye, had watched them laugh – and had laughed with them – as if they had no cares in the world? Had he really only given his wife a brief send-off, a quick peck on her cheek and a small hug? Had he simply just hugged his daughters goodbye, secure in his belief that he'd see them again n a few days, and it was therefore okay to be skimpy in his demonstrations of affection?

Why hadn't he taken the time to say proper goodbyes? To say the things he'd never been able to before? Why didn't he tell them he loved them, that he didn't know how to live without them? Why? Why did he let them go in the first place, let them leave his house with no more than a hug and a simple wave good-bye? Why hadn't he kept them safe, kept them with him? Couldn't he have simply put his foot down just this once, just once keeping his wife for himself, and their daughters for themselves?

_'Why did I have to lose them too?'_

Feeling the inevitable tears beckon, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on the aluminium band down the middle of the glass window. He had to be strong, had to show Amy he was 'okay' so that she'd leave him alone with his thoughts...with his memories.

'Okay', of course, was always going to be a relative assessment.

"Joey..."

How could he be okay when he'd lost the few things he had always believed mattered: a sense of belonging, and the love of his family?

What could he do with himself now that his reasons for getting up in the morning had been obliterated in one careless moment? How could he continue? What would he do? Would he hunt down the scoundrels who'd taken them from him? Or would he drown his sorrows, using the drink to keep the memories at bay? Where would he find the strength to move on, to keep living without them by his side?

"Joey?"

The emptiness inside him told him he just didn't have it in him. He already felt as if he'd lost a limb, like someone had callously ripped out a part of his soul and heart without warning. _'Already...and how long has it been?'_ Not that a warning would've made it more bearable, something that he could withstand and somehow acclimatize to...nothing could. Only Time would heal this particular wound to his heart and yet he already feared that not even all the time that the universe had to offer would ever be enough to dull the internal ache.

This bleeding of his soul was from a wound he knew not how to grasp nor comprehend, let alone find a way to heal. All he could see the pain, the grief, the anguish of being stranded alone where moments before he'd been part of a strong, seemingly unbreakable team. It was everywhere he turned, with no way to escape it nor bypass it...and he wasn't sure he wanted to. Part of him wanted to wallow in the ache inside, wanted to stay forever in this moment, before he had to try to live without them.

"Joey!"

He blinked as the voice gradually growing more and more concerned and loud finally penetrated the bleak haze of his thoughts.

_'Amy....'_

He turned the word that appeared in his thoughts over and over a few times, trying to make sense of it. 'Amy'? Did he know an 'Amy'? What did it mean to him? Was it the name of someone he knew, someone he considered a friend, someone he really should be listening to...?

He blinked.

_'Amy!'_

He snapped back to reality with a great deal of effort, forcing his mind away from the shadow that had fallen over his thoughts, and was promptly greeted with the worried frown of a fellow...make that a former fellow officer who was currently staring at him with a very intense gaze. Lesser men would have wilted under the power brewing in those eyes.

Taking a deep breath, the sergeant reluctantly decided to get on with the remaining tasks for tonight, which were only slightly less unpleasant than the ones she had already accomplished. She couldn't count the number of times she had been forced to do this duty, to inform a worried family member that some loved one(s) wasn't going to be coming home anymore. In a city resembling more of a quagmire than a haven, it had happened many more times than it really should have...and it never got any easier. She'd always promised herself that the day it did would be the day she'd retire. Someone would have to be as heartless and callous as the Blockbuster to be used to the suffering and grief the news always caused.

Joey, for all his projection of a hardened-exterior – an accessory vital to working as a Bludhaven cop – was no different. She could feel him suffering in silence even with as little as she knew him, the real him, the one he never showed at the office. The news had hit him hard, as it would anyone. She herself had a husband she loved dearly, and children of her own she cherished every time she came home after a long, grinding shift. She couldn't bear to think of what she would do...of how she would feel...if she lost them as he had just lost his. "Joey?" she began cautiously, gently placing a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. "You still with me?"

His eyes tracked slowly to her face, and she swallowed discreetly when she saw in them a thousand years of pain. "Yeah?" he asked hoarsely.

It was more of a statement than a question, and it was her years of walking the lonely beat of a honest Bludhaven cop that helped her hide her wince at the flat and lifeless tone. "Joey, I need to ask you a few questions," she told him as gently as she could, "I want you to think carefully about them before you answer, because it'll change the way I'll investigate, okay? With me so far?"

His eyes never wavered from her face, and he nodded slowly, a pinprick of light slowly returning to the ocean of darkness in his eyes – but still ultimately dwarfed by it.

"Now, have you received an unusual case lately? Or been asked to look into something that's really weird, even for Bludhaven?"

He gave her a blank look that said it all. He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

"Joey, I need you to be absolutely sure on this, that you haven't taken on any abnormal or volatile cases lately. Anything that's out of the ordinary, anything at all, I need to know."

Joey silently turned back to the window, his face thoughtful and his mind churning mechanically.

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Near the outermost edge of the maze of streets that was Bludhaven's faltering industrial districts, there is a little known strip of buildings forming a link between the industrial and the residential. It was unremarkable purely for the fact that it was another 'village-living' project that had never quite gotten off the ground as its creators had hoped. Well, just inside the wannabe-village on the first street to the left, there was a small alley between two of the former 'town houses' that was...well...unremarkable except for the fact that it was only a few blocks away from what had once been Nightwing's Lair. It was otherwise just another one of Bludhaven's many alleys: dark, shadowy, and full of enough refuse – and not just 'human waste' at that – to make any sane person consider long and hard if they really wanted to go in there.

...That is, it was just another alley until a few moments ago, when the wheezing and shaking figure currently resting against a wall had stumbled through the entrance to the alley. Even in the shadows of the alley that created a darkness fit enough to form a black hole, it was pretty clear that whoever this person was, they weren't exactly in good health.

The figure's audible gasps for air grated on both the air and the person's lungs, thanks to the unmistakable sound of ribs shifting with every heaving breath. They were leaned heavily on the wall, using it not only for a prop so that they'd remain vertical (well, somewhat vertical), but also to maintain their hold on the world of consciousness. Shoulder's shaking, teeth chattering slightly in the sudden cold of this fair night, a trembling hand was carefully used to brush a matted lock of dark hair out of a pair startlingly clear eyes...and thus revealing another little tidbit of information about this strange visitor:

'It' was actually a 'he'.

The stranger gingerly leaned his head back against the rough brick wall with a pained wince, the simple action causing a low-grade migraine to blossom inside his skull in all its painful glory. He gave a long and slow exhale through clenched teeth, trying to imagine he was releasing the pain as he released the air, just like he'd been taught. Unfortunately, either his imagination was useless or there was just too much pain there, because it felt like it didn't make even a tiny dent in his killer headache at all.

_'Make a note, kid,'_ he thought hazily. _'Next time I get beat up, remind me not to goad the nutcase doing it.'_ One of these days, he was going to learn to keep his big mouth shut and himself out of trouble – probably when (if ever) the Joker lost his permanent smile, knowing his luck.

That thought brought a frown of unease to his face as he realized for the first time that he had no real idea where he was or how he got here, let alone wherever it was he'd been trying to get to. He cast his eyes around his surroundings – careful to move his head as little as absolutely possible – as he tried to see where exactly he was. He found little enough to help, for it seemed to him that this alley seemed exactly like every other alley he'd ever been in, except that he didn't think he had ever smelt such of aromas before in his life. He inhaled with each rattling breath the scent of half-opened garbage bags, the smell of something rotten pervading the air, the nauseous never-ending motion of a swarm of maggots and the circling flies, all intermingled with the heady and aromatic stink of feral animals and rotting sewage.

_'Well, something tells me I'm not in Kansas anymore,'_ he thought to himself sardonically, a twisted smirk on his lips. As far as he was concerned, he was pretty certain that he wouldn't need any of the old-fashioned 'smelling salts' while he was in this alley. He certainly shouldn't be able to lose consciousness with such an unique flavour keeping him awake, lest he add to it if he collapsed and couldn't find the strength to get up again.

He let out a wistful sigh through pain-tightened lips, followed immediately by a wince from his careless action as his chest complained quite vocally. Shoving all thought aside, he mustered up from the very depths of his spirit the strength to push his aching body away from the wall, intending only to make it as far as his nearest ally in this city before he collapsed – even his most base instincts knew that the place he'd come from was far too dangerous (compromised) a place to return to right now. He wavered unsteadily on his feet for a moment before he managed to regain a semblance of balance as he took a cautious step away from the vulnerable 'safety' of the wall.

That was when the shadow fell upon him from behind.

He barely had the time to comprehend what that meant when a child of no more than ten burst into the alley, colliding into his side with surprising strength for the boy's small size. The stranger rebounded with a stumbling gait back to the wall once more, a pained hiss escaping clenched teeth as an arm unconsciously wrapped itself around his already-bruised torso.

He squinted through half-swollen eyes, watching the child scramble into the alley while absently noting and wondering about the urgency in the boy's movements through the haze of pain reawakened by the stumble he'd taken.... What was the kid trying to do, escape an inferno or something?

Then came the deep, gravely voice that spoke with thinly-veiled amusement from behind him, the one belonging to the shadow that had just joined him, that he already knew would be inhabiting his nightmares for years to come:

"Well, what do we have here? The runt tried to escape me, huh?"

A burst of tension straightened his slumped posture as his eyes widened with surprise (fear). He turned slowly, his body stiff and sore from more than just his injuries, dreading what he would find. He stopped when he was facing the alley entrance, his swollen eyes squinting in the light his eyes had adjusted to going without, the beams of light falling across the stylised 'R' flowing across his chest and the patch of night across his features.

There were truly few people in this world that either Robin or Tim could bring himself to hate in the full sense of the word...and the man he now faced had his name right at the top – and appearing in quite a few entries underneath – of that exclusive list.

The Phoenix was back.

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As always, T.B.C. and R/R....


	6. RoE: The Inferior Response

_Additional Disclaimers:_ See first chapter for the essentials. For this chapter, the quote from the lyrics to Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely come from the _Backstreet Boys_'s album, Greatest Hits Chapter One. And all remaining mistakes are mine, 'cause I can't resist tweaking even after its been beta-ed.

_Summary:_ A stand-off in an alley, reminiscent of one of times past, doesn't end well. Heck, there's a lot of things that aren't going to plan right now...

As always, please remember that this story is effectively set in the DC universe immediately after The Last Laugh story arc's conclusion. Its just that six months have passed in that universe with no further arcs occurring. AKA, its my answer to what The Last Laugh left hanging.

The main reason it took so long is the WCtP (What Came to Pass) section in this chapter. That section has currently delayed posting the chapter by over seven months. I was never happy with it, and it showed. So I finally had a brainwave and swapped the WCtP sections in 5 and 6 around, and suddenly everything started fitting a lot more sweetly and I could finally start polishing the chapter. Hence the repost of the older chapters – if I've got to redo one, I figured that I might as well fix up the things that bugged me in the first few chapters while I'm at it. :)

So, with no further delays and shenanigans, please enjoy the final fruits of my labours.

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This chapter is dedicated to _Bongsum Kim_ in deep thanks for his tireless efforts to improve earlier chapters and ask the questions no one else would, making this a better story and me a better writer for it. Many, many thanks for all your hard work in my behalf, Kim, and may you find success and happiness along the road of life. :) I really will miss our talks.  
Many, many, thanks also to _Janet_ and _Gaer_, for picking up this story and helping me feel better about posting it. This chapter wouldn't be out without their support.

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**

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ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE**  
**Rules of Engagement**

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_**Chapter 6**_  
_**The Inferior Response**_

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Guilty roads through an endless love_  
_There's no control; are you with me now?..._  
_...Show me the meaning of being lonely..._  
_...Tell me why I can't be there where you are_  
_There's something missing in my heart_  
_I have nowhere to run; I have no place to go_  
_Surrender my heart, body and soul._  
Show The Meaning Of Being Lonely  
Backstreet Boys 

_Light is the absence of Dark._  
Anon

_What happens when the monsters find out where you live?_  
Anon

_A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.  
_Oscar Wilde

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What Came to Pass IV

_  
Running. He was running again. _

_His footsteps pounded the pavement in tune to his heart beating within his chest, a thumping beat of suspicion and unacknowledged fear. He could hear the drumming beat through the blood rushing past his ears as the adrenaline flooding his system boosted the blood supply to critical areas. The adrenaline thus sharpened his vision even as fear reduced his focus until it was solely on the next turn he had to take, the buildings flashing past him forming an insanely jumbled mix of sensations and sights that he knew he'd never untangle. Places and faces and facades merged into one in his mind till it was becoming impossible to tell friend from foe in his memories, never mind the real world. All he had to go on was pure instinct and judge of character, not to mention more than a little hope that he wouldn't judge wrong. _

_His pursuers had always nameless figures, one out of a thousand faces in a crowd. He saw them everywhere, lurking behind him in the shadows, watching him around corners, in the sideways glances at his dishevelled appearance and haunted eyes. He saw them in the mother's face watching him to make sure he never went near her baby, in the boys playing in that park that looked up as he hurried through, in the old men on that bench that seemed to be dozing the day away, in the business men and women rushing past him as if he was carrying a plague. Then again, he was a plague; no one could come near him without receiving a late-night visit by the warriors on his trail, something he'd never wish on anyone even if he hadn't already experienced it for himself. _

_That was probably why Sanctuary seemed such a distant concept. With every hour that he remained on the streets, the odds against his survival just kept getting worse and worse. With the underground and black-market alerted to his appearance and for some reason more than willing to turn on him, the list of available safehouses was dwindling fast. With all doors closed to his knock and all ears shut to his pleas, there wasn't much left for him. Not even the police were a viable option – a lesson he'd learned the hard way a few days into this mad dash for freedom. _

_He'd been burned more times in the last few weeks than he cared to remember, by the very people he would've once trusted with his life. Even the lowest of the criminal scum weren't normally very willing to turn on an innocent man, but turn on him they did, and in sufficient numbers to make him suspect his pursuers had given them enough incentive to make common sense no longer an option. Pardon the french, but out here on the streets, payback could be a bitch. In the underworld, there was nothing worse than a wronged man looking for blood. They were the dangerous ones, the unpredictable and uncontrollable factors that could quite deliberately ruin months of delicate plans for a chance at vengeance. _

_He'd once liked to hope, at some point, that this was what he'd become to the ones running him down...but that hope was more like a distant memory now, now that the end was nipping at his heels. He could feel it coming for him, even as he sprinted down the streets of the city and through dark alleys. It was there at the edge of his senses, at the back of his mind, in the primitive regions of his soul: _

_Something wicked his way came, and it was coming for him. _

_It was then that he spotted the little niche carved into the alley wall that signalled an opening, hopefully with a door attached – he'd been fooled by openings without doors so many times already that he dared not hope for a room beyond it. He flung himself at it anyway, desperation and fear urging him on and shouting down the voice of reason nattering at the back of his mind. Praying the entire time his momentum would be enough to force the door opent, at first the door barely seemed to give underneath him, as if it was made of sterner stuff than it should've been. _

_That was when he heard the pounding footsteps coming behind, and for one heart-stopping moment, he was the deer out in the open that felt the hunter's gaze but couldn't move to save its life. _

_Heart quite literally in his throat, the fear galvanised him into action again and he thrust himself at the door again, urging it with his thoughts as well as his muscles to open. He was not yet so far gone that he wished for death to end his troubles, even if he knew it was going to claim him sooner rather than later. That was probably why he dared not look, be it five minutes or even five seconds, ahead or behind, because looking back only reminded him of why he was running and looking ahead would only hasten the inevitable that he was not yet foolish enough to welcome. _

_And then all of a sudden the door gave way beneath him, and he stumbled through into the unlit room beyond. Only the last shreds of his rational thought made him pull the door almost shut behind him. He slumped against the wall by the door, struggling to control his heaving breathing and ignore the cramps in a body pushed to its limits and beyond. _

_How long had he spent on the move anyway, always looking over his shoulder? It was definitely longer than a fortnight since he'd left what he'd once called his home, but he wasn't completely sure it had been less than a month either since he had last been able to relax. The days and weeks blurred together until he wasn't sure where the nearest "safehouse" was, let alone what part of town this was. _

_Whatever the case, he'd spent far too much time alone and afraid and he welcomed this small opportunity to catch his breath even as he kept a grim watch through the crack where the door was left slightly ajar. _

_And none too soon. His pursuers were barely a second behind him, he noted in the part of him that was constantly analyzing the world around him. Had the door taken any longer to let him through, he really would have been that proverbial deer in the headlights. _

_It was a pair this time, he realised as the two warriors ran past him, one clad in black and the other in red and green, their black cloaks billowing behind them and their breathing barely affected by the mad pace they were setting. Passing him by so close that he could've reached out and fingered their sleeves had he so chosen, he hardly dared breathe, more than a little convinced they would hear the beating of his heart that would surely give himself away. How else to explain all the times he'd failed to evade them in situations like this, even when he'd been convinced he'd made no sound except to quietly suck air into his lungs? _

_At least it wasn't going to happen again tonight. The pair passed him by without looking to either side, intent on following the path they thought their prey had trod, too confident in their abilities to consider the possibility that their 'prey' might have deviated from their plans. _

_He was no one's prey. _

_There was a moment there when the light from the crescent moon far above shone almost directly on their faces, and his breath caught in his throat. He could not see the features of the one further away from him, the one all in black, covered as they were by more black material; but the other one had a face of a young sixteen-year-old, his clear blue eyes and fresh face containing a deadliness that belied his age. He was right at the age where he should be focusing on the girls at school and partying with his friends...but instead here he was, chasing down a breathless man scared down to his core and feeling every single one of his years. _

_So young. Hell, they were all too young for this madness. _

_He shook his head to clear his wandering thoughts as he averted his gaze and carefully moved away from the door along the wall, past experience making him careful not to even scrape his clothing together in case it might give him away. After giving himself a moment to adjust to the lack of light in the room, he looked around for the first time, more than a little cautious. He'd burst inside this place with little thought to what it contained, a mistake he thought he'd learned to avoid a few days (or was it weeks?) ago when he'd found himself knee-deep in Vicelords with his pursuers literally hot on his heels. _

_Knowing better as he did than to try to go back out through the door, he was grateful – more than even he could comprehend – that nothing seemed amiss. Still, he dared not bring himself to hope that this room would provide an escape route for him, somewhere he could hide and rest for a bit. The time he had available before the pair discovered he'd evaded them could be counted in seconds, and it would be half that again until they'd pick up his trail once more and the chase would begin all over again. He needed to find a way out of this place that didn't involve the door he'd just come through. _

_He stumbled again as he tried to step away from the wall, his exhaustion and aching muscles catching up with him yet again, his knees trembling as they tried to bear his weight and ended up almost dumping him on his butt. He struggled for a long moment to keep on his feet, bracing himself on the nearby wall, knowing without a doubt that once he went down he wouldn't be able to get up again for a couple of days. He had to rest soon, or else he might as well just roll over and give himself up, because there was no way he could continue to de— _

_A woman's cut-off scream stopped his thoughts (heart) in their tracks. _

_A cold chill swept through his heart, bringing with it a creeping dread and leaving behind nothing but emptiness and a dulled resignation in its wake. He tensed at the shadows that suddenly took on a human form, a form boasting a blue stripe that was at once sickeningly familiar and foreboding. _

_Nightwing...smirking...and pushing towards him something the vigilante had held in his arms... _

_And then he knew. Not a word had been spoken by his hated foe, and yet he knew. Nightwing had found her. _

_He stiffened and felt the blood leave his face as he involuntarily took a half-step forward, his mouth forming words not even he knew as he mentally pleaded with the Fates for anything, anything, but this. But he could only watch helplessly as that other part of his soul stumbled for a moment, her soft auburn hair flying around her face. He clenched his fists when he felt the sudden urge to tuck that flyaway hair behind her ears, to hold her close and let her lean on him, steeling himself with all his strength not to show how much he cared and thus not to reveal to Nightwing the hold his woman held over him. He'd do anything to save her, even give his life to keep her safe and alive, and he knew with everything he was that Nightwing shouldn't know that. It would be used against him faster than he could blink to make him 'lay down his king' in this mad chess game they played. _

_And then she raised her head, her beautiful teal eyes widening as they locked with his. _

_Time froze, and his focus narrowed until that mattered was the here and now and their surroundings no longer mattered. The two companions stared at each other for a moment, an eternal moment of the silent communication managed only by those who knew that each other was the other half of their soul, those who shared the bonds of true and pure love. Their eyes said more in that frozen second than they could ever say in the words of a hundred lifetimes, filling up volumes with unparalleled love and devotion, of a loyalty to each other that could sweep away nations and conquer worlds...but it wouldn't be enough. It couldn't be enough. _

_His face hardened as he steeled himself to turn aside, to tear his eyes away from hers, to seal his heart to the confusion and hurt on that beloved face as he turned back to the crazed vigilante. He glimpsed the vigilante's face, saw the growing smirk that could only signal that Nightwing already knew what he'd tried so hard to hide, and his gaze flicked back automatically to the love of his life as fear clenched his heart and constricted his lungs. _

'No... I can't let that happen.'

_His gun was out in an instant, the Beretta tugged out of the waistband of his jeans where he'd kept it ever since he'd started running and levelled it at his nemesis faster than he could blink. He held it steady in a classic two-handed Weaver grip as best he could, the gun (amazingly) never wavering as he sighted down the barrel and increased the pressure on the trigger. _

_One way or another, it was going to end here. _

* * *

The Phoenix was back. 

He stood there at the face of the alleyway, blocking the exit with his metallic armor glinting and gleaming under the light that leaked into the alley from streetlight outside. The (twisted) man beneath the armour was barely even panting from exertion, somehow thus making the events of the last half-hour or so seem little more than a dream.

But if this was a dream, then it was a waking nightmare.

The evidence as to the reality of the night was standing right before the villain, evidence that none could deny...least of all Black Phoenix. Indeed, he regarded that evidence and considered himself to be downright proud of his handiwork and the havoc he had wrought.

For there Robin himself stood, trapped in the alley, wavering on his feet and holding onto the wall for balance (support) with the other arm wrapped protectively around his ribs. His once bright uniform was tattered and torn, smeared with blood and mud from the many times he'd tripped and lost his balance on the way here. Not even the cape shrouding his form could hide the weariness in his bones and the exhaustion that came after travelling just a few blocks on pure strength of will alone. His mind had slipped more and more into neutral with every shambling step he'd taken, his body kept moving only by instinct as his thoughts had focused on one thought and one thought only:

Safety.

But now even that was beyond him. The Lair had been desecrated by the presence of Black Phoenix. It was no longer the haven and secret place of his older brother; no longer the place Robin had often visited in the last six months when he'd needed some time to think or even just some pure solitude. Not even the Cave was comfortable anymore, thanks to the package he knew was sitting in cold storage, still awaiting full analysis. His memories of that package, he knew, would appear distorted in his dreams for as long as he lived, no matter what the outcome of these events. And now, in a deserted alley in Blüdhaven's industrial district, he couldn't even rest for a moment without being caught and trapped again.

No place was safe for him now.

Robin stared tiredly at his hated foe, knowing all too well that he was at the end of his rope. He had tried his best, called on reserves of strength he hadn't known he'd had, done more than should've been humanly possible, but now it was all over. The two birds of ash and of morning had come face-to-face once more, but this time he truly had nothing left with which to defend himself. His tank was long since running on empty, and it hadn't been enough to see him through. It hadn't been enough.

He could already feel the dark void sinking its long claws into his soul, not bothering to wait for his heart to finally stop beating before it tried to drag him down into the dark pit, never to be seen again. He felt it, had felt it the entire way here, and didn't know why he'd bothered to fight its hold on him. Either he died a "natural" death as a vigilante, or Black Phoenix would take care of it for him. Whichever way he ended up following, dead was still Dead...and he was far enough past the point of no return that he didn't really care how it would finally happen. If he was dead, at least he'd see Dick again...assuming he even believed in an afterlife.

He liked to hope there was. At least then he could hope that the Phoenix would one day rot in Hell for all eternities.

"Are you going to kill me now?" The calmly spoken words emerged from his mouth before he was aware of even thinking them, but Robin made no move to withdraw them. In some ways, he wished he would be killed. Death would be such a pleasant release from this never-ending heartache he battled with every rattling breath he drew.

His hated foe just laughed in response, as if he'd just heard a good joke. "Don't flatter yourself, kid. I don't kill without just cause."

For some reason, the reply didn't faze Tim. Maybe it was because he'd just been battered physically, mentally, and emotionally by the last twenty-four hours that he was simply numb, unable to feel anything but the cold emptiness filling his soul. Maybe he'd simply faced one too many psychos since he'd first donned the Robin costume to care about one more crazy excuse. Maybe it was because he was starting to run out of reasons to get up in the morning. So he did the only thing he knew how to, the only thing left to him: He arched one eyebrow – an unconscious imitation of the Bat – and simply asked: "Like you did with Nightwing?"

The Phoenix's mocking laughter died a quick death at the mention of that name, and he moved a step closer to tower over his younger prey. "I killed _Nightwing_," his mechanical sounding voice snarled, spitting the name out from behind his mask like the curse it was, his breathing heavy as he struggled not to release his anger on the youth, "because that little deserved everything he got for what he did to me."

Robin choked back a sudden surge of bitter laughter of his own even as he cautiously craned his neck back to see into the villain's eyes through the mask, ever-mindful of the thumping of his concussions. "You call that a 'just cause'? What did he do that's so bad?"

The Black Phoenix glared heavily down at the kid punk through his mask, hatred boiling in his depths. His hands curled into fists by his side as the flame of anger stroked his mind and tipped him on the edge of losing his last few shreds of control. "You really have no idea, do you?" he demanded darkly, his voice harsh and roughened by hate.

The bitter laughter that had come to him so readily vanished like evaporating water in the Sahara, and Robin swallowed hard at the emotions he detected in the question despite the mechanical distortion of his foe's mask. His instincts screamed at him that he had just crossed a line he should've avoided (fled from) and he automatically began seeking a way to defuse the situation. His mind was the clearest it could be with his body in the state it was, his thoughts full of a clarity he normally only found in his current state after prolonged meditation, but still everything he thought of would only make it worse.

The Phoenix squared his jaw, his burning anger building the longer the upstart vigilante remained silent. His heart was aflame with a furnace of emotion and torment, insisting on the freedom it needed to take him high up on its wings to the place of true peace to which only his anger could take him. All that he was, everything that made him who he was, demanded that he avenge his pain on the young boy before him, that he show the boy exactly how it felt to brought time and again to within inches of death...and yet for some reason he found himself holding back, found himself struggling not to let the purity of his anger blind him, much as he craved the release that the white-hot rage would give him once he yielded to it.

Just for a second or two...that's all he wanted...just a moment... Was that really so much to ask?

Meanwhile, Robin tried to think of what he'd said to set the villain off, but for the life of him he couldn't pin it down. He could sense it was something obvious, something he should've immediately grasped, but it was as if his view of it was being distorted by something else so that it escaped him every time he managed to draw close enough to touch it. He swallowed hard past the lump in his throat, and desperately turned his thoughts towards trying to think of something to say so as to not goad the villain more than he already had.

Should he say "yes"...that he actually did have some idea of what was going on, that he knew the cause of the Phoenix's apparent grudge against Nightwing? No. He could not. Not only would that be a lie, but he knew that would be tantamount to admitting culpability in some part of this "grudge-match"...and how could he be guilty of something when he didn't know what it was? So maybe he should say "no"...that he really did have no idea what he was supposed to have done. But then that might also imply he thought himself innocent of any crime except waiting too long to find Dick's whereabouts, and he feared that the Phoenix would interpret that as arrogance and thus would only inflame the situation further. If only he knew what was really going on!

And so he tentatively went for what he thought was the middle of the two options: "Um, should I?"

The Phoenix snarled at the cheek of the boy to deny all of what (he) everyone knew to be fact. That, for him, was the last straw. No longer would he try to withhold the strength of his rage, no more would he try to moderate his responses. All his restraint and control evaporated and deserted him like so many other things in his life had when the flickers of hate and anger within his heart quickly burst out into a fiery flame that consumed him with its heat. He literally saw red as the raw power of his rage overtook his thoughts and boiled in his veins, quickly becoming conscious of nothing other than his blazing need to strike out at something other than himself.

One way or another, he was going to end this confrontation here and now...like he'd failed to do that fateful time when the stakes had been the life of the girl he loved.

Robin mentally swore at himself when he heard the other's answering growl, knowing it meant he'd just picked the wrong reply anyway. He swallowed hard and cautiously backed up a step. _'Why do I have a bad feeling about this?'_ he mentally asked the air as he automatically slipped into the best defensive stance his body could muster. And that was all the preparation he had time for before his mental question was answered and the relentless onslaught was upon him.

The youth's hastily erected defenses didn't even make the twenty seconds they'd lasted in the Lair, and Robin quickly found himself crumbling under the power of every blow upon his already-battered body. Once again he heard himself cry out with every fist and foot that connected, catching the smell of his fear intermingling with blood as barely-healing wounds were torn open and older injuries were joined by new ones. All too soon he was lying on the ground, curled up in a fetal position with his arms wrapped around his head and his legs futilely trying to protect his chest – already bruised and broken from tonight's earlier scuffles – as the one-sided onslaught continued despite the broken cries he could no longer hold back.

And then it stopped, the silence quickly joined by pressure on his chest and a rushing stiff breeze that blew his matted hair against half-lidded eyes and placed unkind pressure upon his body in all the wrong places. The world seemed to whirl around him faster and faster until it was moving at mach speeds while colours swirled before his eyes, all shifting and dancing between the dark spots clouding his vision. Hands grabbed at him from all round, grabbing him and jerking him this way and that with random brutality, leaving him overwhelmed and open, unable to predict when the next groping move would come and thus unable to defend himself.

However, before he was even aware of it all, before he could comprehend what it meant, the hands disappeared as the world seemed to slow. But the dizziness and the mad jumble of colours persisted and were joined by something hot incredibly close to his body, creating in his head a cacophony of impressions and sensations that made him cry out, pleading with it all to stop.

And then it did stop and the hands disappeared...but with them apparently went his support for then he was falling...falling...forever falling to the hard ground as the darkness claimed him, sucking him deeper and deeper downwards until he knew no more and felt no more when his exhausted mind finally managed to pass out.

* * *

Superman never made it to Nightwing's once and former lair. He never saw the bodies of the fallen Titans, tossed aside like so many used toys by Black Phoenix. He didn't see the Batmobile parked haphazardly out the front of the once-abandoned dealership turned vigilante Lair, evidence of one of the very few times Batman had impulsively rushed into a dangerous situation. He was not even there when what vigilantes that were left standing found the video tape, forgotten amidst all the chaos as it still waited in the Lair's VCR to be ejected. 

In fact, he barely even made it past Blüdhaven's northern suburbs.

He had been flying over the city outskirts alongside Diana, half listening to Oracle's summary of the events of the last twenty-seven or so hours over the communicator while the rest of his mind sorted through the myriad of sensory information he was receiving.

It hadn't taken him long at all to realise why Nightwing had chosen to reside here, all those months (lifetimes) ago. In under two seconds, he had managed to pick out 46 muggings in progress, 1 gang-war about to get kick-started in a major way, 26 simple BE's, 52 armed BE's, 12 ramming-snatch-and-grabs, and approximately 36 car-jacks in progress – and that wasn't counting the number of small-time pimps, drug operations, blackmarket deals, shady visits, and general all-round lawlessness that he was picking up as well.

_...green-red-yellow..._

If ever there was a town needing a vigilante, it was this one. The problem, Superman knew well, was that they had "lost" their previous one – for lack of a more tactful way of phrasing it – which always made criminals feel invulnerable and overconfident. Whoever came in to clean this town up would not only have to start from scratch, but they'd probably be starting about a figurative kilometer behind what the city had been when Nightwing first arrived. He had no doubt that it would be a member of the Batclan that would come to tidy up the town or their close associates – the city was, after all, implicit "Bat property". Of course, such a move would probably also entail a change of costume, from the vigilante's original costume to the midnight blues and blacks that Nightwing had once sported with pride after leaving behind the green and yellow costume of Robin. One way or another, Nightwing's legacy would never be allowed to die nor fade lik—.

_...red-green..._

The world around him disappeared entirely as Superman suddenly (finally) realised what his eyes were telling him. Flying over a nondescript alley, his super-sharp vision just managed to penetrate the polluted haze forever cloaking the city like a death shroud to see the events occurring far below. What he saw, he would swear later, made his heart stop beating for an eternal moment.

_...yellow-red..._

Before he fully realised what he was doing, what he was seeing, he'd handed the comm over which Oracle was still talking to Diana and had dived towards the alley far below, abandoning Diana and Oracle and plummeting almost straight down towards the earth. He squinted in an effort to minimise the effects of the wind rushing past him so that he could focus on what he was aiming at even as he strained his powers and abilities to their absolute limits to make it. He put his all into his desperate flight and more, pushing himself further than he'd ever had before in a race against time.

But it wasn't enough. Even travelling at close to mach one and deaccelerating at the very last possible moment, he'd been too slow.

He'd been almost on top of them before he'd realised that he was aiming wrongly, coming only a metre above a rooftop before he had managed to adjust his course for the alley adjacent to the building... Arms reached out even as he'd consciously realised he'd been watching Robin desperately fighting some strangely-clad foe, his opponent being the cause of most of the shifting colours and glaring reflections he'd seen... Glimpsed a metallic mask jerking up in surprise even as he'd descended from on high, had heard the feral snarl when his hands had closed around the tail of young Robin's cape...and yet he'd been entirely too late.

He was too late.

Even for Superman, it was all too fast to comprehend. One moment he'd used the advantage of surprise to the full, he'd had a secure grip on the young hero's clothes that couldn't be shaken...and then he felt himself freeze as he had heard the material start to rip apart and heard Robin's frantic (pleading) cries for help...to not let him go, to keep him from the arms of hell.

But he was too slow.

He heard the final ripping sound, the final cry mixing both pain and a plea for help, for someone to save the boy's soul from what he knew was to come...and then nothing. Nothing. He came to a stop barely an inch above the dirty, grimy concrete floor of the alley, a look almost of disbelief and astonishment gracing his handsome alien features as he righted himself and landed gracefully. And there he remained, alone in a dark alley with nothing more to show than a scrap of material in his closed fist for all his frantic efforts. Somehow, he still wasn't sure how, the two had vanished, and with them went the prospects of one of the few Young Justice heroes who'd truly had his respect and admiration.

The flashes of red and green and yellow were burnt into his retina for eternity, a testament to his failure. His hands hanging loosely by his side could still feel the tattered and roughened fabric slipping through his fingers even as he'd tried to tighten his grip. His ears echoed with the boy's cut-off cry, with the young hero's call for his hoped-for savior. The boy's glazed and forlorn blue eyes, both concealed and revealed by the half-mask, dilated with pain and hope, stared at him from the shadows.

And it was all the more accussatory for being figments of his imagination.

The half-mask his mind saw was not really present, the vigilante who'd worn it having vanished like a wisp of smoke on a windy day. The alley he hovered in was empty, as empty and barren as it had been mere moments ago and would now be for an eternity to come. It was silent, cold, and lonely, barely a sign of what had just transpired. It was as if he'd imagined it all...

No. He hadn't imagined it at all. _'It's real.'_ The small and tattered scrap of yellow cape hanging out of his fist said it was. _'It has to be.'_ He stared at the torn patch of material, rubbing his thumb silenty over the reddish stains. _'But I wish it wasn't.'_ Robin was gone, vanished along with his captor, and he was at a loss to explain how on all of Krypton it had happened.

Failure wasn't a feeling Superman was used to.

"Superman? You there?"

He blinked, jerking his mind back to the present at the eerie sound of the respected hacker's voice in his ear through his back-up JLA comm. "Yeaahhh..." he responded absently, still looking at and fingering the bloodied Kevlar scrap in his hands.

"What on earth happened?" Oracle demanded, her flat, electronic tones still containing a world of upset. "One moment you're with Diana, and then my sensors are screaming that you've hit the ground. Care to explain?"

"I thought I saw young Robin..." he explained slowly.

Oracle's voice immediately perked up, the eerie emptiness she'd demonstrated earlier gradually disappearing under the stream of questions that followed: "You did? How was he? Where are you? Do you need backup?"

He paused to scan the alley, and again saw nothing. It was, he found, still very empty. "Naaahhh," he replied carefully, biting back a regretful sigh, "no backup will be necessary. Whatever happened here, it's all over now. They're gone."

There was a muttered curse he quickly decided he'd be better off not to have heard, along with the soft sigh that accompanied it. Finally Oracle spoke again: "Right. I've got the position logged for later analysis. Now you'd better tell me exactly what just happened on your way to the Lair."

"Oh, nothing," Superman replied with studied nonchalance that covered most of the guilty frustration brewing inside him. "But I think...I think I might've just met your Phoenix...and he had Robin with him." A beat. "They're gone."

* * *

Technically speaking, Robin wasn't just gone. 

He was nonexistent.

Every single tracking signal Batman had quietly slipped into Robin's gear over the years had mysteriously disappeared from Oracle's system. One moment they showed him motionless in Nightwing's Lair – no doubt unconscious – and then they simply winked out.

Every single last one.

Oracle frowned, her suspicious nature instantly alerted that something was going drastically wrong. It could, of course, be a mechanical failure, some kind of technical glitch that took his sensors off-line...but all eighteen at once? With no one else being affected? While she wasn't about to calculate the odds of that kind of thing happening, she knew all too well that the odds were remote – even in their line of work. The far more likely causes were that Robin had managed to remove them without tripping her systems, or that he'd had them removed for him – and all without tripping her systematic firewalls, which, coincidentally, was supposed to be impossible – or...

...Or he had been killed by his opponent, this 'Black Phoenix'. But then the 'corpse marker' should have activated the moment his heart stopped producing the electrical field unique to the human body, and she knew for a fact that this particular device was also thankfully (forebodingly) silent.

She scowled heavily even as she forced that final thought away and out of consideration. Robin wasn't dead. He couldn't be. The kid was far too stubborn to let some punk villain beat him, no matter (who) what the said villain claimed to be. He just didn't have it in him, period. She hoped he didn't, anyway.

But so many things had changed within the last twenty-four hours that she no longer felt certain of much of anything anymore. Her world had been turned on its head, all her points of reference brutally taken away from her, leaving her feeling more lost and alone than she ever recalled feeling before. Not even when the use of her legs had been taken from her by the Joker had she felt as isolated and empty and vulnerable as she did now. The maelstrom of emotion and grieving shock she had experienced then was unable to compare to the emptiness now growing inside her soul with the loss of the man in her life...just like being chastised by Batman when she was Batgirl could never come close to a gentle rebuke from Alfred.

Tim wasn't dead. She wouldn't let him be dead, she couldn't. It was too soon, too close to Dick's...

No. He wasn't dead.

So what (where) on earth was he?

The answer came to her with uncomfortable suddenness. Tim Drake, the latest Robin, was really little more than a teenager. A quiet-genius teenager with incredible street-sense and a nose for trouble, but a teenager nevertheless. That's all he was. He was the kind of kid that should be out playing pranks on the adults around him instead of catching crooks; he should have been hanging out with friends his age instead of fighting the dregs of the criminal world. When he was the age to learn to drive, he was already making his mark on Gotham in his own personal way – by leaving more than a few of his footprints on criminals' faces.

Times like these were one of the few times Barbara allowed herself to question the wisdom of the course they had chosen, of opening up the eyes of people like Tim to the true evil the system could create...and worse. Was it wise? Had it been a good idea to take their childhood away and make the kids grow up all too fast?

And how the hell could she ever answer something like that? She herself had volunteered for a life-course in Vigilante-101 when she was sixteen, giving up her own peace and happiness – and eventually her legs – for the sake of the many, even going so far as to force herself into the Batman's circle of associates to get it. Could she really say that she regretted it, that she wished her time in the night sky and flying over Gotham had never happened? Despite it all, despite the Joker and what had happened to her family, she couldn't honestly say she regretted the way her life had played out. The only choice she wished she had done differently was the day she chose to unknowingly open the door to the Joker and invite into her life all the pain that the maniac could give.

But if she hadn't...

Would Jim Gordan, the uncle that had become her Dad, still be alive? He would've opened that door instead of her...and who really knew what harm the Joker would've inflicted on her dear father without her there to distract the deranged clown? And besides, without the shooting, would she ever have truly moved on from her days as the first Batgirl? Or would she have simply drifted, ending up penniless and shattered from a life spent going nowhere? For that matter, where would the world be without her Oracle? How many criminals would've gone unpunished without her skills on the keyboard? How many times over would the Bat and his followers have been killed without her to penetrate the dime-a-dozen conspiracies every week against them? ...And would she ever have realised the depth of the unquestioning love held out to her by the only man to truly hold the keys to her heart?

Barbara leaned over her console and rubbed her temples wearily in a vain attempt to hold back the migraine she could feel gathering behind her eyes. She didn't know the answers to those types of philosophical questions, the ultimate 'what might have been's that not even Bruce could truly contemplate... And for that matter, she wasn't that sure she ever wanted to know the answers to these questions. Some things just weren't meant to be known.

So where did that leave them? Where did it leave her?

It left her a lonely woman in her clocktower, the weight of her loss pressing down hard upon her even as she forced herself to keep the tears inside, fought tooth-and-nail to keep the endless pain and grief bottled up inside where no one would ever see how she was dying from a broken spirit with every second that passed. Lost and alone, she slowly tapped her keys, the sound echoing in her ears as a mournful song with haunting tones as she worked mindlessly, 'half-an-ear' always directed towards the speakers in case the few remaining of those she had allowed herself to care about ever tried to call her.

And where did that leave Tim Drake? Where did all her lonely thoughts leave young Robin?

Nowhere. Somewhere. Anywhere but where he should be.

The clocktower tolled the hour of seven at night, but the once comforting tones were hollow and empty to her. The hours of the night stretching out in front of her mind's eye in an endless path leading to nowhere, the typing of keys continued throughout what was undoubtedly going to be a loong night.

* * *

Joey Flaherty had racked his brains thoroughly, doing it twice over for good measure and to make sure he wasn't overlooking anything, but he was quickly coming to the conclusion that trying to find something "unusual" in Blüdhaven was like asking a connoisseur of the _feline domesticus_ species to pick out a cat in a room full of them. Amy would've been much better off asking if him there was anything "abnormal in the sense of being normal" in his life. This was Blüdhaven they were talking about, after all, the city where the darkest patch of Gotham's night was their brightest midday, where the criminals ruled the roost and the good-guys really did come last on the pecking order. His whole life hadn't exactly been "normal". 

_'Abnormal in the sense of being normal...'_

Come on, he was one of the few contacts for Nightwing in the entire city, for crying out loud! Superheroes dropped in on him left-right-and-centre, like vultures swooping on their prey—

He grimaced and pushed the mental images that thought had created out of his mind. Ok, so maybe he could've picked a better analogy, but the point remained. Hell, he'd once tried to invite Nightwing into his home to have a cuppa with him and his family on Christmas Eve! What the hell was "normal" about **that**?

_'What's "normal"...about that...'_

Then it hit him.

_'...A flying visit from Robin...'_

A vigilante dropping by and knocking a few more years off his life didn't really upset him, apart from the usual surprise that comes from hearing voices from a corner or a window that you swore was empty only a moment ago. The whole shock element was gone for him, especially after that whole business with that Charon nutcase.

_'...The Grayson case...'_

For that matter, as a Blüdhaven cop he had seen more than his fair share of crazy and stomach-churning corpses. Torture, mutilation, dismemberment, it was all part of the whole Blüdhaven gig. And it certainly wouldn't be the first time that a murder case he'd taken on had, at some point, threatened his family's safety.

Oh yeah, he had something "normally abnormal" going on in his life. Did he ever.

He opened his mouth to explain it as best he could to the patient sergeant by his side, his mind racing to find the words to explain something he wasn't fully sure he understood himself, when something happened that made him freeze in his tracks:

Something heavy landed against his front door with a loud thunk.

Joey grimaced, forcing himself to relax and unclench his fists. He shot Amy a lop-sided smile that never made it higher than his lips. "I think I know the answer to that question, but I also think I'd better check that out first."

She shook her head in return, her instincts screaming at her that something bad lay on the other side of that door. "Maybe I should go, Joey. What if it's the people responsible coming to take you away as well?"

Joey stopped and leveled his gaze upon her. "Let them," he answered simply. "I'll still be with my family. And besides, if it is them, it would be ten times worse if a copper answered the door instead of a worried husband and father."

With that he turned and walked away, leaving her to consider his words and promptly ignore them. As his long stride carried him quickly to the front door, Amy followed about two metres behind, her revolver out but pointed towards the floor. Quite pointedly ignoring the fact that he knew she was there, he yanked the door open before he could give himself time to reconsider. He ran a hand through his hair and tugged on his shirt even as he did so, trying his best to look presentable just in case the caller was someone he knew...only to find that he needn't have bothered making the effort: The doorstep was empty, with no obvious source of the noise he'd heard.

Joey strode through the doorway and down the garden path a few steps, his head turning this way and that as he searched for any hint as to who or what had caused the "message" he had received. The dim light of city-night revealed themselves as little more than blobs of gray to his light-accustomed eyes. The street was as quiet as it ever was, his neighbours having already turned in for the night or were away on holidays. There wasn't even the sterotypical piece of litter fluttering across the bitumen in a light breeze. Heck, there wasn't even a breeze.

Nothing.

He frowned as he slowly turned and walked back to his own front door, his mind churning and getting nowhere. All thoughts stopped in their tracks, however, when he saw the state of the front door. What had once been a pristine, varnished wooden door now had a knife, a sharp and shiny knife at that, quite boldly stuck in the wood and holding down a piece of paper containing the stereotypical letters cut from some newspaper.

_'What the hell? I thought that only happened in movies.'_

By reflex he reached up to tear down the note, but managed to stop himself in time – the paper might hold vital fingerprints or something that he dared not disturb. Careful not to get too near, lest even his breath alter something it shouldn't, he read the note...and read the note again, just to make sure.

  
**wE HavE yOUr wiFe daUghTeRS**

**ForGEt tHe BaTs**  
**or gRaySOn's dEatH**  
**wilL bE PaInlEss**  
**cOMpAreD tO tHeiRS  
**

Kidnapped. Someone had kidnapped his family, his wife and...daughters.

Both of them.

That statement with all its meanings and implications penetrated his swirling thoughts, and he closed his eyes and almost collapsed to the floor in relief. Lisa was alive. _'She lives!'_ His youngest daughter wasn't dead after all. _'They're alive!'_ His family was intact...for the most part, at least. Almost giddy, he couldn't help but slump against the exterior wall as the overpowering burden he'd been carrying ever since Amy had entered his home lifted from off his shoulders.

The Blüdhaven cop in question chose that moment to reappear, having heard nothing from the direction of the front door and thus believing that it was alright for her to make her presence known. Her eyes widened when she noticed the knife and the paper attached, and its message. "Uh...Joey?"

Eyes still closed, he let out a lop-sided smile. "Kidnapped. They're not dead."

"For now," she replied grimly, ever practical, and his smile died a quick death when his relief was damped by reality rushing back in.

The Blüdhaven PI watched in thoughtful silence, mind churning once more, as Amy pulled on latex gloves to protect the evidence and carefully removed both the note and the knife from his front door and placed them onto separate transparent evidence bags.

_'Ok Flaherty. First things first.'_

Whoever had kidnapped his family obviously had something to do with the death of young Grayson, or at least knew how painful the reports said Grayson's murder had to have been. _'Check.'_

By extension, they would also have to know that he was doing some digging into Grayson's death that was prompted by Robin's visit, for why else would they warn him to stop helping the vigilantes? But that also meant they were aware of Robin's visit. _'Double check.'_

And that would also mean that whoever they were, the kidnappers were worried enough about what he could find out that they'd chosen to resort to such drastic measures as kidnapping to get him to lay off the case. Why? What on earth could he find out that would've been so worrying? Did one of his contacts know more than they should've...or had let something slip to the wrong person?

So what could he do about it?

His first option, as always, would be to go to the cops, or more specifically the BPD. Amy already was involved, so it wouldn't be that hard to take a step back and let her do her stuff...but would it be enough? The BPD being what it was, not even Captain Addad could keep Arnot out of something like this, and once the crooked Inspector saw the note... Well, let's just say that Joey didn't have many friends in the BPD anymore. The crooked ones hated him for standing up to them, the clean ones weren't impressed with him for that one time he'd looked the other way and accepted money of dubious origins that he'd only used for his family, and whoever was left couldn't care less about him now that he was a civilian. It didn't help matters that he was known to have operated hand-in-glove with Nightwing, a vigilante working outside the law. And even if he hadn't technically talked to Nightwing since that Charon nutcase was in Arkham, vigilantes still featured heavily in his life. Robin's early-morning visit was just a case in point, and the note was testament to that.

Once his enemies in the BPD saw that note, they'd be all too willing to see it as evidence of him working with vigilantes – which it was – and thus arrest him as an accomplice to some goodness-knows-what crime. And that was a scenario he feared would end with him being found one morning in a cell with his throat cut or his head facing the wrong way, a message from Blockbuster himself that playing with vigilantes didn't pay. Not even Amy and Captain Addad could save him from that fate if he was in jail, and there was certainly no way he could save his family from that position.

No, better to keep the BPD out of it. Of course, there's always the FBI...

Just as he came to that first decision, before he could follow the next line of thought, Amy pulled her fingers across the top of each bag, the airtight seal slipping shut and protecting the contents from contamination. Only then did she strip off the gloves and turn to face him with an almost angry look on her face. "Care to tell me what on earth you've gotten yourself into, Joey?"

He flinched unconsciously at her voice, saying nothing for a long moment as he tried to work out how to convince the Sergeant of his decision.

"Come on, Joey," the officer suddenly prompted as if she could sense he'd made at least some kind of decision, almost but not quite growling in frustration. "Tell me what the hell is going on here and what on earth you've gotten yourself into."

He focused on the worried face of his former fellow officer, and swallowed hard at her frustrated expression. _'Good question. What have I got myself and my family involved in?'_ He shook his head at her slowly. "I...I don't think you really should want to know, Amy."

"Like hell I do," she retorted firmly, her entire body communicating her disagreement with his decision.

He shook his head again, more firmly this time. "No, Amy. Tell Addad I had nothing to say on the record. And then tell him that I want both of you to stay out of this, both for your sake and mine...and for all our families."

"But the note—" she protested.

"Give the evidence to me," he interrupted again. "I can access faster and more reliable labs to analyse it than you can. I think—"

"You mean the vigilantes," Amy broke in for a change, her face showing her distaste of and disgust with the idea. She made no move to shift from her spot or offer the two evidence bags respectively containing the note and the knife to him. There was no way she was going to let him turn his back on the help she had to offer, even if a small voice in the back of her head that she did her best to ignore agreed with his assessment of Blüdhaven's medical services.

He sighed and stepped aside to make room for her to pass him to go outside anyway. "Like I was trying to say, Amy, I think I know what's going on, but I also don't think you need to know. Not right now anyway. It'll be better that way, both for your family and mine. Trust me on that, if nothing else," he concluded quietly. "I don't want your family being in the same position mine is on my conscience."

She frowned and tightened her lips, hearing what he was saying but not liking it one bit. "I still think you should let me help you."

Joey sighed and tried again. "Tell you what. Give me thirty-six hours to do my thing, and just add that I need some time to get myself together." It wouldn't exactly be a lie anyway. "And then if I'm no further along than we are now, you have my full permission to come here and do what you like with what I've got...within reason of course," he quickly added.

Amy reluctantly nodded with a long sigh. "All right. Against my better judgement, I'll agree to it for the sake of what you once were." She handed him the two evidence bags and stepped past him, but turned back on the step to give him her best glare. "But mark my words, Joey, I'll be back here tomorrow night. Early."

Somehow he mustered up a weary smile he didn't really feel. "I'd expect no less. Thanks Sarge. For everything. I meant it."

"Don't mention it," she retorted gruffly, and was up the garden path before he had the chance to say anymore.

* * *

Joey Flaherty remained standing at the open door, watching her stride to her car – no doubt muttering the entire way about stubborn civilians and their habits – and get in and slam the door shut. He waited until the engine had started and she was pulling away before he stepped back inside and shut the door, even then watching through the sidelight panel until the police car's tail-lights were receding into the distance before he turned his back, shut the door, and head straight for his office. 

There was plenty of work to be done, and he could only hope he had given himself enough time to do it.

The first thing Joey did was place the evidence bags on his desk and stare at them for a long moment. There was something...something about the threatening note that troubled him...something right in front of him, he could feel it. But when he reached for it, searched for it, it evaded him like an incoming soccer ball into goal would those few times he tried his hand at goal-keeping in his youth. It always that little bit out of reach, and in the end he pushed the thought aside in the hope that it would come to him if he didn't think about it. He was always better at kicking than he was at catching, anyway.

It only took a few seconds to flip through the phone book to find the number he wanted. He placed the evidence bags on the table before him and went to pick up the phone he'd installed in his office, but hesitated just before his hand gripped the device when his eyes fell on the note once more.

His eyes narrowed as he finally realised what was still bothering him about the threatening note: The kidnappers knew that he was aware of the specifics of how young Grayson died. All family loyalties aside, it was the only reason he could think of for why they'd think he'd have the motivation to obey their demands. They knew he knew, and also knew he wouldn't want to put his family through what he knew would happen.

But how did they know he knew? He wasn't even on the Force anymore and so had no official reason to know the details. Sure, some members of the public knew that a rookie had recently been murdered and had heard that the body had been badly burned... But only the BPD members knew the rookie's identity and the more nauseating injuries, let alone exact details on how the murder was thought to have happened...and even those were kept "close to the chest," so to speak, to avoid causing undue alarm and panic. No one, least of all himself, wanted the public to know about the latest maniac to visit Blüdhaven.

Whoever killed Grayson had been one sick psycho, and he shuddered to think of his family in the hands of such a monster.

Besides, out of the entire BPD, only Addad and Rohrbach had reason to suspect that he even had a file on the rookie's death and he had no worries about the leak coming from their corner. Those two were as honest as the day was long and he also knew they had no reason to tell their superiors what they knew (did). What was the point? Technically, there was no real harm in one officer innocently "venting" about the brutal murder of her rookie partner to a former friend, particularly when the said friend had worked with said rookie in the past. They weren't even the ones to give him the file, anyway. Besides, he'd done all his investigating "on the quiet" so to speak, during the times he had free when he was at home and least likely to be noticed. Hell, he'd even gone to the length of always keeping the file with him or in very close vicinity at all times – a case this "hot" was too important to leave unattended at his office overnight.

And so he was back where he started: how did the kidnappers know that he knew?

And while he was at it, how did they know that he'd had a visit from a member of the so-called "Bat Family"? How could they know that he'd decided to help them out in their investigations of Grayson's death, even though Robin hadn't actually asked him about the rookie's murder? He'd been home all day, not speaking to anyone except his contacts over the phone...

He stopped, realised what he'd just said, and swore to himself under his breath. Somewhere, somehow, his security had been penetrated. Either they were watching his home...and/or the phones were tapped. Neither option was appealing, especially as the latter meant that they would've had to have physically enter his home to plant the "bugs". His fists clenched unconsciously in anger at the violation of his privacy and his family even as he told himself to calm down, that he might be wrong...that all his instincts might be leading him down the wrong path...

Yeah, right. And what were the chances of that?

He scowled and strode to the other side of the study, to the power-point where he'd plugged in the charger of the cellphone Nightwing had given him all those months ago. He had no doubts that at least this phone was still secure and not "bugged", as he always kept it on his person or was in the same room as the phone while it was charging so that he wouldn't miss Nightwing when the punk finally called him. The time he'd spent with Amy was in fact the first time that he'd been further away from it than a few metres. Still, just to be safe, he unplugged the cell from its charger and went outside.

He was standing in the middle of the backyard – ostensibly for a better signal from Blüdhaven's floundering cell network – before he made the call to the number he'd picked out and memorised from the phonebook. As he waited for the other end to pick up, it took all his control not to obviously glance around in a suspicious manner and thus reveal his wariness of any surveillance. No sense in tipping anyone off that he was on to them, was there?

After a couple of seconds of waiting, a young lady's cheerful and smooth voice came down through the line: "Hello, you've reached Titans Tower Direct, Argent speaking. How can we help you?"

He held the cellphone to his ear and carefully kept his voice down as he answered, "Hi, I'm Joey Flaherty, a good friend of Nightwing's. Can you tell me how to contact Robin please? It's urgent."

"I'm afraid we haven't heard from Robin in a while, Mr. Flaherty," the young lady replied. "But hold the line for a moment and I'll connect you through to someone who has."

"Thanks, I'll hold," Joey replied and went back to trying to be unobtrusive as he watched his surroundings. A few moments later...

"Hello, this is the Oracle. I believe you're after Robin, right Joey?"

_'This is the Oracle? Yikes'_ "Yeah, I am," he replied, then launched into his prepared story before he could convince himself otherwise. And the entire time, his mouth was drier than the Sahara, not only due to a touch of awe at who he was speaking to – what law enforcement officer hadn't heard of the Oracle and what the famed hacker could do? – but also in the creeping fear that he might not be making the right decision.

Yet what else could he do but try it anyway?

* * *

The room was dim, shadowy, a place of mystery and concealment. 

What ambient light there was floating througth the room seemed almost silvery-blue, coming as it did from the waxing moon shining valiantly from its place just above the artificial horizon created by the city's buildings. The moonlight streamed into the room through the cracks between the slats of the venetian blinds covering all the windows, a cool ambience that sucked the soul and colour out of all objects it touched. Maybe that was why it didn't seem to have success in the illumination area, concealing as it was as much as it illuminated. Far more prominent in the room were the shadows, the pools of inky blackness and midnight navy that gathered even in places it seemed that should've been impossible.

Just the way its owner liked it.

The Phoenix preferred the Darkness more than he'd ever liked bright lights and artificial illumination. Where the Light was all about illuminating for clear vision and crisp shadows with definite boundaries, he liked his Darkness more primitive and pervasive. He wanted shadows that spread without limits and left things to the imagination, for more to be concealed than it was revealed. It was just more comforting that way...and made for more darkness for him to hide in, too. Besides, however much he'd once tried to deny it and now embraced it, the Dark was more a part of him than the Light had ever been anyway.

Recent events had only served to emphasize that part of his nature.

The only concession he had made to the Light had been one done reluctantly, even though it certainly needed to be done. He wasn't about to let his latest prey go unsupervised. That was why, while the rest of the room was as shadow and mysterious as he could make it, the eastern end of the large open-plan area was a study in contrasts. Unlike the rest of his hideout, this end was compartmentalised and well lit. He was quite proud of the way he'd managed to virtually shine a floodlight on the eastern end while keeping the rest of the room in the deep, dark shadows he much more preferred.

It had taken some doing, but he'd managed to make sure that there were no concealing shadows around in which the Bat's spawn could hide and conceal himself. Every single square centimetre of that end was clearly visible. He'd learned the hard way last time that he needed to be able to keep a close eye on his captives all the time, especially those of the BatClan variety. Those ones had a nasty habit of getting out of even the most secure of places. Hell, the only reason he'd been able to keep Grayson cooped up as long as he had had been because he'd eliminated the bad's dexterity with his hands from the equation within the first few hours.

His latest captive was certainly no less dangerous, he knew, for all of the boy's relative youth and apparently battered and beaten appearance. Of course, the boy was sleeping now...or maybe he was just unconscious. It was hard to tell. The kid certainly looked like he should be unconscious, what with his bruised and battered features and the way he stiffly held himself even in the realms of dreamland. The way the brat had been brought here was itself enough reason to be unconscious, he knew.

Still, it didn't matter either way, really, the Phoenix reflected to himself as he picked up the clock lying next to him on the table he was working at. He didn't truly care what the punk did as long he kept still and quiet in the small room that was going to be his new home for a while.

He shot another cursory glance through the one-way glass separating the harshly lit area from his shadowy working area to confirm that the kid was actually still there like he'd been barely seconds earlier, absently turning the miniature clock over in his hands as he did so. After a moment's careless consideration, he calmly set the small clock down again and returned to working on the project before him.

It didn't really bother the Phoenix that he was the cause of the dark purple bruising and dried blood on the youth's face, nor even the grimace of pain that twisted those features even when asleep. It didn't even give his conscience any concern that he knew what kind of effects the kid was going to experience because of his chosen mode of transport.

Oh, it wasn't that he was some kind of sadistic sicko who got himself off on the pain and suffering of others, especially since he'd been on the receiving end of that type of pain and suffering for far longer than he truly cared to remember. He knew Pain far more intimately than most ever would in thousand lifetimes and knew better than to inflict as much of it as he could on others. Well, most of the time he did, anyway. The Bats were the only people for which he would ever make an exception. _'Serves all of them right to finally get a taste of their own medicine,'_ he thought to himself sourly.

No, he was just being realistic about things, he knew as he picked up some discarded wires and promptly began to fiddle with them while he thought. It had to be done this way, it really did. He needed the kid with him, needed that extra leverage of the kid's injuries to keep the damned Bat and his cohorts off-balance long enough for all the pieces in his plans to move into place. And he needed the kid himself kept off-balance by what was going to happen to him so that he wouldn't try to escape...again.

Besides, if the punk hadn't put up such a great resistance earlier tonight, it wouldn't have been necessary to deal out such brutal punishment. The amount of force dealt out had simply been necessary to secure the brat's surrender. Regardless of his outward youth, the boy was still one of _them_, part of The Enemy that were the bane of his existence. He was Robin for crying out loud, not some snot-nosed brat that would fall over the moment it was looked at wrong. Taking him down was never going to be a walk in the park, especially since all Bats knew 60 ways to take someone down and another 100 ways to make it hurt. They were people that would stop at nothing to achieve their objectives, he knew from hard experience. Hell, he counted himself lucky to have come off only a little worse for wear from his own brushes with them. Certainly the end result had been much worse for—

He scowled at that thought and firmly pushed the thought away before he could complete it and before he could think of her name...pushed it away and fed it to the rage within his heart, the rage that burned for the blood of the "Bat Clan."

With that, he held up the object he'd been constructing for final inspection. Twisting it from side to side, he visually checked and double-checked the components and wiring, running through his mental schematic of the workings of this device as he did so. Finally, nodding to himself in satisfaction, he stood. Keeping his carefully constructed device in one hand, he quickly grabbed something else from amid the objects scattered all over the shadowed table before moving deeper into the half-shadow he'd been working in...

...And, with one final glance at his prisoner, he promptly vanished.

He had plenty of time to give the Bat a taste of same Fire that had led to his own rebirth before the brat would awaken. Plenty of time.

* * *

The fingers of the Oracle still flew over the keyboard a short while later, her intense emerald gaze focused on the holographic displays in the air before her. Her fine eyebrows drew closer together, the little furrow between them forming in tandem with the lines in her normally smooth forehead and in direct proportion to her level of concentration. 

The Oracle was on the hunt.

_...Tiptaptap tiptaptapatip tiptap..._

To her side a cup of once steaming coffee sat, now cold and forgotten in the familiar and ever-addictive rush of hunting down unfindable files, of being where she ought not and doing what she ought not. Her emerald gaze was almost unblinking, so great was her focus and absorption in the Hunt. She was so close she could almost feel it...

_...Taptiptaptaptap taptiptaptaptaptip taptaptiptap..._

...It was like an itchiness in her bones, a quickening of her spirit, a beating in her chest, all of it speaking to her in a language of instinct and skill. The goal – the conclusion of the Hunt by the capture of her Prey – stood before her in her mind and grew clearer and closer with every breath she drew and every tap of her flying fingers on the keys...

_...Taptaptiptaptaptap taptiptaptaptaptaptiptaptaptaptiptiptap..._

...But reaching it would be both bitter and sweet: the conclusion of the Hunt intermixed with knowing her skill had once again proved itself superior. And yet, oh, when she was this close, nothing else mattered but the Goal, the conclusion and the triumph of the Oracle. Just a little bit more, and...

_...Tiptaptaptiptiptapta—_

_'What the hell?'_

_Tiptaptapta—_  
_Tipt—_

Barbara Gordon suddenly let loose with a flow of language that coloured the air and even the holographic display she worked from – she could've put the proverbial trooper to shame ten times over – as her session was abruptly terminated from the other end. She angrily pushed her chair away from the console and let her breath out in an explosive gust, cursing rapidly under her breath at the ingenious designer of the encryption and protection around the file she was after.

She'd already broken through at least two layers of encryption – both with passwords that had been laughably easy to crack, like "God" and "SuperUser" – before coming up against what she'd believed was one final layer of protection...until it turned out to be five layers of super protection in one just as all the security bots started yapping at her heels. It had been one of the few times the Oracle ever allowed herself to be flustered. It had taken all her of quick, dirty, programming skills to evade the security and escape with her pride – and her link to the file – more or less intact. And then she'd come against the final layer of the five-fold protection that just had to be grand-mother of all firewalls.

And all this was just for one lousy folder on the Phoenix mythology! One. Stupid. Lousy. Folder. It was probably only filled with pornojunk, too. It had certainly happened often enough to her before. Why, she wouldn't even be surprised if it was just an empty folder, the way some of the security paranoid freaks out there operated. Those were the ones that gave delusional paranoids a bad name, who were the real bitc—  
**CLAP-BANG**

She jerked in her chair in surprise for a moment, the sudden boom of lightning and thunder breaking into her tirade just before she got herself wound up enough to really let loose some of the tension aching in her breast. Only then did she realise the distant noise she had dismissed as background static a few minutes ago – or was it a few hours ago? – had actually been the power of the rain falling on her roof. That was when she actually glanced out the window to see what the weather was. _'Dandy. Just what I didn't need. Typical Gothamweather,'_ she growled mentally, swearing softly and glowering out the window as if the commotion outside was the cause of all her troubles.

On the other side of the pane was the chaotic yet somehow harmonious vista of nature in all its glory and magnificence. Rolling black storm clouds overhead and sheets of rain driven down by gusts of wind contrasted with the flashing burts of lightning in all its form. The churning clouds were lit by a constant flashes of light as bursts of electrical energy forced a path through the air, both from the ground to the storm above and between the layers of cloud. The accompanying booming thunder – the sound of the electrical energy making its own path and connecting with the answering stream from the other end – echoed all around her Clocktower.

She shivered, suddenly feeling her smallness next to the show being put on by the unreasoning fury of the weather. The small protection afforded her by the glass pane from the lightning and the accompanying thunder didn't just seem to be enough against the storm that seemed to have its centre right above her home.

Her expression slowly softened, although the furrow in her brow never left, as she continued staring at the storm, mesmerised by what was raging outside. Slowly rolling her chair closer to the window, Barbara quietly reflected to herself that there was something...something almost soothing in watching the tempest playing itself out from the relative safety of the other side of her window. The frenzy of this powerful force of nature somehow reached her on levels ne'er before touched by a simple storm.

It was, she realised in an unexpected spark of clarity, as if she felt like the heavens were crying when she herself could not thaw the tears frozen deep inside, as if the sky was mourning for her at a time when she could not let herself grieve for all she had lost this day.

She wanted to cry; she really did. She wanted to wail and howl her heartbreak at the stars and the moon as the wind was howling between Gotham's skyscrapers, wanted to shut herself away from the world and let herself fall apart. She wanted to hurl herself down with all the power of the rain hurtling down from the sky and cry just as many tears to drown the entire world. She felt herself as battered by events and feelings as the city was by this storm, and wished that she could let herself release her own pent up emotions. Maybe that would ease the storm brewing inside her soul.

But more than even that, she ached to hear Dick again...just one more time. That was all she really wanted. Just one more chance to say...to say what she should've said all those years ago when she first met him., to explain everything she had procraistinated about saying for far too long...for just one more chance to say goodbye. That was all she wanted. She wanted to see him again...to hold him close, to protect from all the badness in the world and keep him safe...keep him alive. More than anything else, she wanted to rewind everything back six months and prevent this entire calamity from unfolding like it had. If she had one wish, one wish at all, that is what she would ask for.

Was that too much to ask? Just one chance to make things right, to make amends, to put things back how they should be... That was all she could ever want or need. She just wanted everything back like it was Before, before her life went to hell and lost all its meaning when he called to say goodbye.

It shouldn't have to be this way.

Failing that, she'd at least do anything to relieve this ache inside her, this gaping black hole of twisting and churning emotion that was tearing her up inside. Anything to soothe the turmoil and chaos running riot throughout her heart. So many torrents of emotion had flowed within her in the last few hours alone that she felt swamped with all their weight. She felt as if she was slowly but surely drowning beneath the flow, beneath the flood of emotions and thoughts she had no idea how to deal with.

So she had done the only thing she did know how to do: she ignored them.

Everything had been pushed all aside and out of the way for about eighteen and a half hours now, and she knew the strain was telling. Just because she could not (would not) let herself feel didn't mean that the torrent wasn't there, flowing ever onwards and steadily taking pieces of her soul away with it, like a gaping black hole within her heart that was slowly consuming her from the inside out.

She felt herself kind of detached from the world even as she felt everything aching so deep within her that she almost didn't think she could stand it another second. It was like trying to hold back the ultimate unstoppable force with only the strength of her will, like the lone ant holding up its hand to try and stop a rampaging bull with fire in its eyes and murder in its heart. Her intentions might be pure and good...but nothing was going to stop her being trampled underneath those powerful hooves like the ant by the power of pent-up emotions.

But what choice did she have?

However much Barbara Gordon might want to curl up in the corner and let Life pass her by, to cry a thousand tears and drown the world, to do something to relieve the unceasing ache within her chest, the Oracle had no such options. The Oracle had to keep functioning, keep moving ever closer to a solution and the answers to the questions that drove her. She had to protect the lives of the superheroes out there in the field, already fighting the good fight against Black Phoenix...and by extension the lives of those who'd have to take up the fight if they failed. She had to keep going.

She had to keep doing the impossible.

At that thought Barbara gave a long sigh, a deep expulsion of air that came as if from deep within her soul and from the very depths of her being, as she brought up a hand and placed it on the cold pane of glass, slightly surprised to find it was trembling. _'Hnh. Probably fatigue.'_ She had so far managed about six hours of sleep in close to seventy-two hours of operation...and it was all finally catching up with her. Allowing her upper body to fall forward, she rested her forehead on the glass and soaked up the chill bleeding into the pane from the storm tempestuously raging on the other side of the glass.

The impossible had never before seemed so hard, so overwhelming...or quite so personal.

She allowed her eyes to close for a moment, content for now to stay at the window. There was nothing else for her to do, after all. The downed Titans were en-route to Gotham's STAR Labs courtesy of Diana, Clark and Tempest...Robin was missing, presumably in Black Phoenix's hands, and she had no ideas on how to find either...both Batman and Supes were doing their own thing...and Joey was hopefully following her instructions. In short, Oracle was not needed right now...and so she had no need to pretend that she was unaffected by the events of the last day. There was finally plenty of time to let herself feel.

But it was once again not to be.

It seemed that no sooner did her breathing finally relax that she was startled by what sounded like a tremendous crash coming from her loungeroom. Her eyes flew open as her Bat-trained ears pricked, knowing from experience that that had been the sound of a someone landing on her window ledge...and undoubtedly getting surprised by the latest modifications to her security system.

Barbara growled deep in her throat as she reached for the baseball bat she'd put in her computer room on impulse right when this mess started. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at the closed door, as if she could see through it to the intruder who was now undoubtedly in her loungeroom. _'Whoever it is, they just picked the wrong night to mess with me...'_

* * *

There. That wasn't too bad of a cliffie now, was it? I mean, at least the scenes kinda ended this time. -)

And, as always, please R/R and TBC...


End file.
